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1Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the
2summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin
3once removed, and I'd known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago. Her husband,
4among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven--a
5national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything
6afterward savours of anticlimax. His family were enormously wealthy--even in college his freedom with money was a matter
7for reproach--but now he'd left Chicago and come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance, he'd
8brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was
9wealthy enough to do that. Why they came East I don't know. They had spent a year in France for no particular reason,
10and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent
11move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn't believe it--I had no sight into Daisy's heart, but I felt that Tom
12would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game. And
13so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all.
14Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the
15bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran towards the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sundials and
16brick walks and burning gardens--finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from
17the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open
18to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch. He
19had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty, with a rather hard mouth and a
20supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of
21always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power
22of that body--he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing, and you could see a great pack
23of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage--a cruel
24body. His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch
25of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked--and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts. "Now,
26don't think my opinion on these matters is final," he seemed to say, "just because I'm stronger and more of a man than
27you are." We were in the same senior society, and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he
28approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own. We talked for a few minutes on
29the sunny porch. "I've got a nice place here," he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly. Turning me around by one
30arm, he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of
31deep, pungent roses, and a snub-nosed motorboat that bumped the tide offshore. "It belonged to Demaine, the oil man." He
32turned me around again, politely and abruptly. "We'll go inside." We walked through a high hallway into a bright
33rosy-coloured space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming
34white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room,
35blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the
36ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-coloured rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea. The only completely
37stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored
38balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in
39after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the
40curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the
41caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the
42floor. The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely
43motionless, and with her chin raised a little, as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall.
44If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it--indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an
45apology for having disturbed her by coming in. The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise--she leaned slightly
46forward with a conscientious expression--then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came
47forward into the room. "I'm p-paralysed with happiness." She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and
48held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to
49see. That was a way she had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker. (I've heard it
50said that Daisy's murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less
51charming.) At any rate, Miss Baker's lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly, and then quickly tipped her
52head back again--the object she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright. Again
53a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self-sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.
54I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the
55ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad
56and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice
57that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered "Listen," a promise that she
58had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour. I
59told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way East, and how a dozen people had sent their love through
60me. "Do they miss me?" she cried ecstatically. "The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel
61painted black as a mourning wreath, and there's a persistent wail all night along the north shore." "How gorgeous! Let's
62go back, Tom. Tomorrow!" Then she added irrelevantly: "You ought to see the baby." "I'd like to." "She's asleep. She's
63three years old. Haven't you ever seen her?" "Never." "Well, you ought to see her. She's--" Tom Buchanan, who had been
64hovering restlessly about the room, stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder. "What you doing, Nick?" "I'm a bond
65man." "Who with?" I told him. "Never heard of them," he remarked decisively. This annoyed me. "You will," I answered
66shortly. "You will if you stay in the East." "Oh, I'll stay in the East, don't you worry," he said, glancing at Daisy
67and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. "I'd be a God damned fool to live anywhere else." At this
68point Miss Baker said: "Absolutely!" with such suddenness that I started--it was the first word she had uttered since I
69came into the room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft
70movements stood up into the room.
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