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1The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in
2fact all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the
3candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at everyone, and yet to avoid all
4eyes. I couldn't guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking, but I doubt if even Miss Baker, who seemed to have mastered a
5certain hardy scepticism, was able utterly to put this fifth guest's shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain
6temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing--my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police. The
7horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker, with several feet of twilight between them,
8strolled back into the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while, trying to look pleasantly
9interested and a little deaf, I followed Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In its deep
10gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee. Daisy took her face in her hands as if feeling its lovely shape, and
11her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I
12thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl. "We don't know each other very well, Nick," she said
13suddenly. "Even if we are cousins. You didn't come to my wedding." "I wasn't back from the war." "That's true." She
14hesitated. "Well, I've had a very bad time, Nick, and I'm pretty cynical about everything." Evidently she had reason to
15be. I waited but she didn't say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter. "I
16suppose she talks, and--eats, and everything." "Oh, yes." She looked at me absently. "Listen, Nick; let me tell you what
17I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?" "Very much." "It'll show you how I've gotten to feel about--things.
18Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned
19feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head
20away and wept. 'All right,' I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool--that's the best thing a girl can
21be in this world, a beautiful little fool.' "You see I think everything's terrible anyhow," she went on in a convinced
22way. "Everybody thinks so--the most advanced people. And I know. I've been everywhere and seen everything and done
23everything." Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom's, and she laughed with thrilling scorn.
24"Sophisticated--God, I'm sophisticated!" The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I
25felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some
26sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute
27smirk on her lovely face, as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she
28and Tom belonged. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Inside, the crimson room
29bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the Saturday
30Evening Post--the words, murmurous and uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamplight, bright on his
31boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of
32slender muscles in her arms. When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand. "To be continued," she
33said, tossing the magazine on the table, "in our very next issue." Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of
34her knee, and she stood up. "Ten o'clock," she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. "Time for this good
35girl to go to bed." "Jordan's going to play in the tournament tomorrow," explained Daisy, "over at Westchester."
36"Oh--you're Jordan Baker." I knew now why her face was familiar--its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at
37me from many rotogravure pictures of the sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I had heard some
38story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I had forgotten long ago. "Good night," she said softly.
39"Wake me at eight, won't you." "If you'll get up." "I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon." "Of course you
40will," confirmed Daisy. "In fact I think I'll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I'll sort of--oh--fling you
41together. You know--lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of
42thing--" "Good night," called Miss Baker from the stairs. "I haven't heard a word." "She's a nice girl," said Tom after
43a moment. "They oughtn't to let her run around the country this way." "Who oughtn't to?" inquired Daisy coldly. "Her
44family." "Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick's going to look after her, aren't you, Nick?
45She's going to spend lots of weekends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very good for her." Daisy
46and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence. "Is she from New York?" I asked quickly. "From Louisville. Our
47white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white--" "Did you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the
48veranda?" demanded Tom suddenly. "Did I?" She looked at me. "I can't seem to remember, but I think we talked about the
49Nordic race. Yes, I'm sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know--" "Don't believe everything you
50hear, Nick," he advised me. I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes later I got up to go home.
51They came to the door with me and stood side by side in a cheerful square of light. As I started my motor Daisy
52peremptorily called: "Wait! "I forgot to ask you something, and it's important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out
53West." "That's right," corroborated Tom kindly. "We heard that you were engaged." "It's a libel. I'm too poor." "But we
54heard it," insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again in a flower-like way. "We heard it from three people, so it
55must be true." Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn't even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had
56published the banns was one of the reasons I had come East. You can't stop going with an old friend on account of
57rumours, and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumoured into marriage. Their interest rather touched me and
58made them less remotely rich--nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove away. It seemed to me that
59the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms--but apparently there were no such intentions in
60her head. As for Tom, the fact that he "had some woman in New York" was really less surprising than that he had been
61depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no
62longer nourished his peremptory heart. Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages,
63where new red petrol-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its
64shed and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard. The wind had blown off, leaving a loud, bright night,
65with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of
66life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight, and, turning my head to watch it, I saw that I was
67not alone--fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbour's mansion and was standing with his
68hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure
69position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of
70our local heavens.
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