Short Story Selections

   V

🛩️; Back to Chapter IV, if you wish.

When I came home to West Egg that night I was afraid for a moment that

my house was on fire. Two o’clock and the whole corner of the

peninsula was blazing with light, which fell unreal on the shrubbery

and made thin elongating glints upon the roadside wires. Turning a

corner, I saw that it was Gatsby’s house, lit from tower to cellar.

At first I thought it was another party, a wild rout that had resolved

itself into “hide-and-go-seek” or “sardines-in-the-box” with all the

house thrown open to the game. But there wasn’t a sound. Only wind in

the trees, which blew the wires and made the lights go off and on

again as if the house had winked into the darkness. As my taxi groaned

away I saw Gatsby walking toward me across his lawn.

“Your place looks like the World’s Fair,” I said.

“Does it?” He turned his eyes toward it absently. “I have been

glancing into some of the rooms. Let’s go to Coney Island, old

sport. In my car.”

“It’s too late.”

“Well, suppose we take a plunge in the swimming pool? I haven’t made

use of it all summer.”

“I’ve got to go to bed.”

“All right.”

He waited, looking at me with suppressed eagerness.

“I talked with Miss Baker,” I said after a moment. “I’m going to call

up Daisy tomorrow and invite her over here to tea.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” he said carelessly. “I don’t want to put you

to any trouble.”

“What day would suit you?”

“What day would suit you?” he corrected me quickly. “I don’t want to

put you to any trouble, you see.”

“How about the day after tomorrow?”

He considered for a moment. Then, with reluctance: “I want to get the

grass cut,” he said.

We both looked down at the grass—there was a sharp line where my

ragged lawn ended and the darker, well-kept expanse of his began. I

suspected that he meant my grass.

“There’s another little thing,” he said uncertainly, and hesitated.

“Would you rather put it off for a few days?” I asked.

“Oh, it isn’t about that. At least—” He fumbled with a series of

beginnings. “Why, I thought—why, look here, old sport, you don’t make

much money, do you?”

“Not very much.”

This seemed to reassure him and he continued more confidently.

“I thought you didn’t, if you’ll pardon my—you see, I carry on a

little business on the side, a sort of side line, you understand. And

I thought that if you don’t make very much—You’re selling bonds,

aren’t you, old sport?”

“Trying to.”

“Well, this would interest you. It wouldn’t take up much of your time

and you might pick up a nice bit of money. It happens to be a rather

confidential sort of thing.”

I realize now that under different circumstances that conversation

might have been one of the crises of my life. But, because the offer

was obviously and tactlessly for a service to be rendered, I had no

choice except to cut him off there.

“I’ve got my hands full,” I said. “I’m much obliged but I couldn’t

take on any more work.”

“You wouldn’t have to do any business with Wolfshiem.” Evidently he

thought that I was shying away from the “gonnegtion” mentioned at

lunch, but I assured him he was wrong. He waited a moment longer,

hoping I’d begin a conversation, but I was too absorbed to be

responsive, so he went unwillingly home.

The evening had made me lightheaded and happy; I think I walked into a

deep sleep as I entered my front door. So I don’t know whether or not

Gatsby went to Coney Island, or for how many hours he “glanced into

rooms” while his house blazed gaudily on. I called up Daisy from the

office next morning, and invited her to come to tea.

“Don’t bring Tom,” I warned her.

“What?”

“Don’t bring Tom.”

“Who is ‘Tom’?” she asked innocently.

The day agreed upon was pouring rain. At eleven o’clock a man in a

raincoat, dragging a lawn-mower, tapped at my front door and said that

Mr. Gatsby had sent him over to cut my grass. This reminded me that I

had forgotten to tell my Finn to come back, so I drove into West Egg

Village to search for her among soggy whitewashed alleys and to buy

some cups and lemons and flowers.

The flowers were unnecessary, for at two o’clock a greenhouse arrived

from Gatsby’s, with innumerable receptacles to contain it. An hour

later the front door opened nervously, and Gatsby in a white flannel

suit, silver shirt, and gold-coloured tie, hurried in. He was pale,

and there were dark signs of sleeplessness beneath his eyes.

“Is everything all right?” he asked immediately.

“The grass looks fine, if that’s what you mean.”

“What grass?” he inquired blankly. “Oh, the grass in the yard.” He

looked out the window at it, but, judging from his expression, I don’t

believe he saw a thing.

“Looks very good,” he remarked vaguely. “One of the papers said they

thought the rain would stop about four. I think it was The

Journal. Have you got everything you need in the shape of—of tea?”

I took him into the pantry, where he looked a little reproachfully at

the Finn. Together we scrutinized the twelve lemon cakes from the

delicatessen shop.

“Will they do?” I asked.

“Of course, of course! They’re fine!” and he added hollowly, “… old

sport.”

The rain cooled about half-past three to a damp mist, through which

occasional thin drops swam like dew. Gatsby looked with vacant eyes

through a copy of Clay’s Economics, starting at the Finnish tread that

shook the kitchen floor, and peering towards the bleared windows from

time to time as if a series of invisible but alarming happenings were

taking place outside. Finally he got up and informed me, in an

uncertain voice, that he was going home.

“Why’s that?”

“Nobody’s coming to tea. It’s too late!” He looked at his watch as if

there was some pressing demand on his time elsewhere. “I can’t wait

all day.”

“Don’t be silly; it’s just two minutes to four.”

He sat down miserably, as if I had pushed him, and simultaneously

there was the sound of a motor turning into my lane. We both jumped

up, and, a little harrowed myself, I went out into the yard.

Under the dripping bare lilac-trees a large open car was coming up the

drive. It stopped. Daisy’s face, tipped sideways beneath a

three-cornered lavender hat, looked out at me with a bright ecstatic

smile.

“Is this absolutely where you live, my dearest one?”

The exhilarating ripple of her voice was a wild tonic in the rain. I

had to follow the sound of it for a moment, up and down, with my ear

alone, before any words came through. A damp streak of hair lay like a

dash of blue paint across her cheek, and her hand was wet with

glistening drops as I took it to help her from the car.

“Are you in love with me,” she said low in my ear, “or why did I have

to come alone?”

“That’s the secret of Castle Rackrent. Tell your chauffeur to go far

away and spend an hour.”

“Come back in an hour, Ferdie.” Then in a grave murmur: “His name is

Ferdie.”

“Does the gasoline affect his nose?”

“I don’t think so,” she said innocently. “Why?”

We went in. To my overwhelming surprise the living-room was deserted.

“Well, that’s funny,” I exclaimed.

“What’s funny?”

She turned her head as there was a light dignified knocking at the

front door. I went out and opened it. Gatsby, pale as death, with his

hands plunged like weights in his coat pockets, was standing in a

puddle of water glaring tragically into my eyes.

With his hands still in his coat pockets he stalked by me into the

hall, turned sharply as if he were on a wire, and disappeared into the

living-room. It wasn’t a bit funny. Aware of the loud beating of my

own heart I pulled the door to against the increasing rain.

For half a minute there wasn’t a sound. Then from the living-room I

heard a sort of choking murmur and part of a laugh, followed by

Daisy’s voice on a clear artificial note:

“I certainly am awfully glad to see you again.”

A pause; it endured horribly. I had nothing to do in the hall, so I

went into the room.

Gatsby, his hands still in his pockets, was reclining against the

mantelpiece in a strained counterfeit of perfect ease, even of

boredom. His head leaned back so far that it rested against the face

of a defunct mantelpiece clock, and from this position his distraught

eyes stared down at Daisy, who was sitting, frightened but graceful,

on the edge of a stiff chair.

“We’ve met before,” muttered Gatsby. His eyes glanced momentarily at

me, and his lips parted with an abortive attempt at a laugh. Luckily

the clock took this moment to tilt dangerously at the pressure of his

head, whereupon he turned and caught it with trembling fingers, and

set it back in place. Then he sat down, rigidly, his elbow on the arm

of the sofa and his chin in his hand.

“I’m sorry about the clock,” he said.

My own face had now assumed a deep tropical burn. I couldn’t muster up

a single commonplace out of the thousand in my head.

“It’s an old clock,” I told them idiotically.

I think we all believed for a moment that it had smashed in pieces on

the floor.

“We haven’t met for many years,” said Daisy, her voice as

matter-of-fact as it could ever be.

“Five years next November.”

The automatic quality of Gatsby’s answer set us all back at least

another minute. I had them both on their feet with the desperate

suggestion that they help me make tea in the kitchen when the demoniac

Finn brought it in on a tray.

Amid the welcome confusion of cups and cakes a certain physical

decency established itself. Gatsby got himself into a shadow and,

while Daisy and I talked, looked conscientiously from one to the other

of us with tense, unhappy eyes. However, as calmness wasn’t an end in

itself, I made an excuse at the first possible moment, and got to my

feet.

“Where are you going?” demanded Gatsby in immediate alarm.

“I’ll be back.”

“I’ve got to speak to you about something before you go.”

He followed me wildly into the kitchen, closed the door, and

whispered: “Oh, God!” in a miserable way.

“What’s the matter?”

“This is a terrible mistake,” he said, shaking his head from side to

side, “a terrible, terrible mistake.”

“You’re just embarrassed, that’s all,” and luckily I added: “Daisy’s

embarrassed too.”

“She’s embarrassed?” he repeated incredulously.

“Just as much as you are.”

“Don’t talk so loud.”

“You’re acting like a little boy,” I broke out impatiently. “Not only

that, but you’re rude. Daisy’s sitting in there all alone.”

He raised his hand to stop my words, looked at me with unforgettable

reproach, and, opening the door cautiously, went back into the other

room.

I walked out the back way—just as Gatsby had when he had made his

nervous circuit of the house half an hour before—and ran for a huge

black knotted tree, whose massed leaves made a fabric against the

rain. Once more it was pouring, and my irregular lawn, well-shaved by

Gatsby’s gardener, abounded in small muddy swamps and prehistoric

marshes. There was nothing to look at from under the tree except

Gatsby’s enormous house, so I stared at it, like Kant at his church

steeple, for half an hour. A brewer had built it early in the “period”

craze, a decade before, and there was a story that he’d agreed to pay

five years’ taxes on all the neighbouring cottages if the owners would

have their roofs thatched with straw. Perhaps their refusal took the

heart out of his plan to Found a Family—he went into an immediate

decline. His children sold his house with the black wreath still on

the door. Americans, while willing, even eager, to be serfs, have

always been obstinate about being peasantry.

After half an hour, the sun shone again, and the grocer’s automobile

rounded Gatsby’s drive with the raw material for his servants’

dinner—I felt sure he wouldn’t eat a spoonful. A maid began opening

the upper windows of his house, appeared momentarily in each, and,

leaning from the large central bay, spat meditatively into the

garden. It was time I went back. While the rain continued it had

seemed like the murmur of their voices, rising and swelling a little

now and then with gusts of emotion. But in the new silence I felt that

silence had fallen within the house too.

I went in—after making every possible noise in the kitchen, short of

pushing over the stove—but I don’t believe they heard a sound. They

were sitting at either end of the couch, looking at each other as if

some question had been asked, or was in the air, and every vestige of

embarrassment was gone. Daisy’s face was smeared with tears, and when

I came in she jumped up and began wiping at it with her handkerchief

before a mirror. But there was a change in Gatsby that was simply

confounding. He literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of

exultation a new well-being radiated from him and filled the little

room.

“Oh, hello, old sport,” he said, as if he hadn’t seen me for years. I

thought for a moment he was going to shake hands.

“It’s stopped raining.”

“Has it?” When he realized what I was talking about, that there were

twinkle-bells of sunshine in the room, he smiled like a weather man,

like an ecstatic patron of recurrent light, and repeated the news to

Daisy. “What do you think of that? It’s stopped raining.”

“I’m glad, Jay.” Her throat, full of aching, grieving beauty, told

only of her unexpected joy.

“I want you and Daisy to come over to my house,” he said, “I’d like to

show her around.”

“You’re sure you want me to come?”

“Absolutely, old sport.”

Daisy went upstairs to wash her face—too late I thought with

humiliation of my towels—while Gatsby and I waited on the lawn.

“My house looks well, doesn’t it?” he demanded. “See how the whole

front of it catches the light.”

I agreed that it was splendid.

“Yes.” His eyes went over it, every arched door and square tower. “It

took me just three years to earn the money that bought it.”

“I thought you inherited your money.”

“I did, old sport,” he said automatically, “but I lost most of it in

the big panic—the panic of the war.”

I think he hardly knew what he was saying, for when I asked him what

business he was in he answered: “That’s my affair,” before he realized

that it wasn’t an appropriate reply.

“Oh, I’ve been in several things,” he corrected himself. “I was in the

drug business and then I was in the oil business. But I’m not in

either one now.” He looked at me with more attention. “Do you mean

you’ve been thinking over what I proposed the other night?”

Before I could answer, Daisy came out of the house and two rows of

brass buttons on her dress gleamed in the sunlight.

“That huge place there?” she cried pointing.

“Do you like it?”

“I love it, but I don’t see how you live there all alone.”

“I keep it always full of interesting people, night and day. People

who do interesting things. Celebrated people.”

Instead of taking the shortcut along the Sound we went down to the

road and entered by the big postern. With enchanting murmurs Daisy

admired this aspect or that of the feudal silhouette against the sky,

admired the gardens, the sparkling odour of jonquils and the frothy

odour of hawthorn and plum blossoms and the pale gold odour of

kiss-me-at-the-gate. It was strange to reach the marble steps and find

no stir of bright dresses in and out the door, and hear no sound but

bird voices in the trees.

And inside, as we wandered through Marie Antoinette music-rooms and

Restoration Salons, I felt that there were guests concealed behind

every couch and table, under orders to be breathlessly silent until we

had passed through. As Gatsby closed the door of “the Merton College

Library” I could have sworn I heard the owl-eyed man break into

ghostly laughter.

We went upstairs, through period bedrooms swathed in rose and lavender

silk and vivid with new flowers, through dressing-rooms and poolrooms,

and bathrooms with sunken baths—intruding into one chamber where a

dishevelled man in pyjamas was doing liver exercises on the floor. It

was Mr. Klipspringer, the “boarder.” I had seen him wandering hungrily

about the beach that morning. Finally we came to Gatsby’s own

apartment, a bedroom and a bath, and an Adam’s study, where we sat

down and drank a glass of some Chartreuse he took from a cupboard in

the wall.

He hadn’t once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he revalued

everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew

from her well-loved eyes. Sometimes too, he stared around at his

possessions in a dazed way, as though in her actual and astounding

presence none of it was any longer real. Once he nearly toppled down a

flight of stairs.

His bedroom was the simplest room of all—except where the dresser was

garnished with a toilet set of pure dull gold. Daisy took the brush

with delight, and smoothed her hair, whereupon Gatsby sat down and

shaded his eyes and began to laugh.

“It’s the funniest thing, old sport,” he said hilariously. “I

can’t—When I try to—”

He had passed visibly through two states and was entering upon a

third. After his embarrassment and his unreasoning joy he was consumed

with wonder at her presence. He had been full of the idea so long,

dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to

speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now, in the reaction,

he was running down like an over-wound clock.

Recovering himself in a minute he opened for us two hulking patent

cabinets which held his massed suits and dressing-gowns and ties, and

his shirts, piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high.

“I’ve got a man in England who buys me clothes. He sends over a

selection of things at the beginning of each season, spring and fall.”

He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one,

before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel,

which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in

many-coloured disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft

rich heap mounted higher—shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in

coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange, with monograms of

indian blue. Suddenly, with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into

the shirts and began to cry stormily.

“They’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the

thick folds. “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such—such

beautiful shirts before.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

After the house, we were to see the grounds and the swimming pool, and

the hydroplane, and the midsummer flowers—but outside Gatsby’s window

it began to rain again, so we stood in a row looking at the corrugated

surface of the Sound.

“If it wasn’t for the mist we could see your home across the bay,”

said Gatsby. “You always have a green light that burns all night at

the end of your dock.”

Daisy put her arm through his abruptly, but he seemed absorbed in what

he had just said. Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal

significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the

great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very

near to her, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to

the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of

enchanted objects had diminished by one.

I began to walk about the room, examining various indefinite objects

in the half darkness. A large photograph of an elderly man in yachting

costume attracted me, hung on the wall over his desk.

“Who’s this?”

“That? That’s Mr. Dan Cody, old sport.”

The name sounded faintly familiar.

“He’s dead now. He used to be my best friend years ago.”

There was a small picture of Gatsby, also in yachting costume, on the

bureau—Gatsby with his head thrown back defiantly—taken apparently

when he was about eighteen.

“I adore it,” exclaimed Daisy. “The pompadour! You never told me you

had a pompadour—or a yacht.”

“Look at this,” said Gatsby quickly. “Here’s a lot of clippings—about

you.”

They stood side by side examining it. I was going to ask to see the

rubies when the phone rang, and Gatsby took up the receiver.

“Yes … Well, I can’t talk now … I can’t talk now, old sport … I said a

small town … He must know what a small town is … Well, he’s no use to

us if Detroit is his idea of a small town …”

He rang off.

“Come here quick!” cried Daisy at the window.

The rain was still falling, but the darkness had parted in the west,

and there was a pink and golden billow of foamy clouds above the sea.

“Look at that,” she whispered, and then after a moment: “I’d like to

just get one of those pink clouds and put you in it and push you

around.”

I tried to go then, but they wouldn’t hear of it; perhaps my presence

made them feel more satisfactorily alone.

“I know what we’ll do,” said Gatsby, “we’ll have Klipspringer play the

piano.”

He went out of the room calling “Ewing!” and returned in a few minutes

accompanied by an embarrassed, slightly worn young man, with

shell-rimmed glasses and scanty blond hair. He was now decently

clothed in a “sport shirt,” open at the neck, sneakers, and duck

trousers of a nebulous hue.

“Did we interrupt your exercise?” inquired Daisy politely.

“I was asleep,” cried Mr. Klipspringer, in a spasm of embarrassment.

“That is, I’d been asleep. Then I got up …”

“Klipspringer plays the piano,” said Gatsby, cutting him off. “Don’t

you, Ewing, old sport?”

“I don’t play well. I don’t—hardly play at all. I’m all out of prac—”

“We’ll go downstairs,” interrupted Gatsby. He flipped a switch. The

grey windows disappeared as the house glowed full of light.

In the music-room Gatsby turned on a solitary lamp beside the piano.

He lit Daisy’s cigarette from a trembling match, and sat down with her

on a couch far across the room, where there was no light save what the

gleaming floor bounced in from the hall.

When Klipspringer had played “The Love Nest” he turned around on the

bench and searched unhappily for Gatsby in the gloom.

“I’m all out of practice, you see. I told you I couldn’t play. I’m all

out of prac—”

“Don’t talk so much, old sport,” commanded Gatsby. “Play!”

 “In the morning, In the evening, Ain’t we got fun—”

Outside the wind was loud and there was a faint flow of thunder along

the Sound. All the lights were going on in West Egg now; the electric

trains, men-carrying, were plunging home through the rain from New

York. It was the hour of a profound human change, and excitement was

generating on the air.

 “One thing’s sure and nothing’s surer The rich get richer and the

 poor get—children. In the meantime, In between time—”

As I went over to say goodbye I saw that the expression of

bewilderment had come back into Gatsby’s face, as though a faint doubt

had occurred to him as to the quality of his present happiness. Almost

five years! There must have been moments even that afternoon when

Daisy tumbled short of his dreams—not through her own fault, but

because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond

her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative

passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright

feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can

challenge what a man can store up in his ghostly heart.

As I watched him he adjusted himself a little, visibly. His hand took

hold of hers, and as she said something low in his ear he turned

toward her with a rush of emotion. I think that voice held him most,

with its fluctuating, feverish warmth, because it couldn’t be

over-dreamed—that voice was a deathless song.

They had forgotten me, but Daisy glanced up and held out her hand;

Gatsby didn’t know me now at all. I looked once more at them and they

looked back at me, remotely, possessed by intense life. Then I went

out of the room and down the marble steps into the rain, leaving them

there together.