houlder and drew  her toward me and asked
her  to dinner. Suddenly I wasn't thinking of Daisy and Gatsby any more, but
of this clean, hard, limited person, who dealt in  universal scepticism, and
who leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my arm. A phrase began to
beat  in my  ears  with  a  sort of  heady excitement: "There are  only  the
pursued, the  pursuing,  the busy  and the tired." "And  Daisy ought to have
something  in  her life,"  murmured Jordan to  me. "Does  she  want  to  see
Gatsby?"  "She's not  to know  about  it. Gatsby doesn't  want  her to know.
You're  just supposed  to invite her to tea." We passed a  barrier  of  dark
trees, and then  the facade of Fifty-ninth Street, a block of  delicate pale
light, beamed down  into the park. Unlike Gatsby and Tom Buchanan, I had  no
girl whose  disembodied face floated along  the dark  cornices  and blinding
signs,  and so I  drew up  the girl beside me,  tightening my arms. Her wan,
scornful mouth smiled,  and so I drew  her up again closer, this time  to my
face. Chapter 5 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 to-morrow  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 to-morrow?" He considered for a moment. Then,
with reluctance: "I want to get the grass cut," he  said. We both looked  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 light-headed and happy; I think I walked into a deep  sleep as  I entered
my front door.  So I didn'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-colored 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 toward  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  neighboring
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  occasionally willing 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  a  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 up-stairs 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 the 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 short cut along the Sound we  went
down 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 odor of jonquils and the  frothy odor of
hawthorn and plum blossoms and the pale gold odor 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
up-stairs, 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
pajamas 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
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  overwound 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-colored 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, and  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  mid-summer
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  exercises?" 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--I  hardly  play  at  all.   I'm  all  out   of  prac----"  "We'll  go
down-stairs," interrupted  Gatsby.  He  flipped  a switch.  The gray 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 good-by 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 whe  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 will 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.
Chapter 6 About this time an ambitious young reporter from New  York arrived
one  morning at Gatsby's  door  and  asked him  if he  had anything to  say.
"Anything to say about  what?" inquired Gatsby politely. "Why--any statement
to give out."  It transpired after a confused five minutes  that the man had
heard  Gatsby's  name around his  office in  a  connection  which  he either
wouldn't reveal  or  didn't fully understand.  This was his day off and with
laudable initiative he had  hurried out "to  see." It was a random shot, and
yet the  reporter's instinct was  right. Gatsby's notoriety, spread about by
the hundreds who  had accepted his hospitality and so become  authorities on
his past, had increased all summer until he fell  just short of  being news.
Contemporary legends such as the "underground pipe-line to Canada." attached
themselves to him, and there was one persistent story that he didn't live in
a  house at  all, but in a  boat that  looked  like a house  and  was  moved
secretly up and down the Long Island shore. Just why these inventions were a
source of satisfaction  to James Gatz  of North Dakota,  isn't  easy to say.
James Gatz--that was really, or  at least legally, his name. He  had changed
it at  the age of seventeen and at  the  specific moment that witnessed  the
beginning of his career--when he saw  Dan  Cody's yacht drop anchor over the
most insidious flat on Lake Superior. It was James Gatz who had been loafing
along the beach that afternoon in a torn  green jersey and a pair of  canvas
pants, but it was already Jay Gatsby who borrowed  a  rowboat, pulled out to
the TUOLOMEE, and informed Cody that a wind might catch him and break him up
in  half an hour. I suppose he'd  had the name ready for  a long  time, even
then.  His   parents  were   shiftless  and  unsuccessful  farm  people--his
imagination had never really  accepted them as his parents at all. The truth
was  that Jay  Gatsby of West Egg,  Long  Island, sprang  from his  Platonic
conception  of himself. He  was  a son of God--a phrase  which, if  it means
anything, means just that--and he must be about  His Father's  business, the
service  of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the
sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old  boy would be likely to invent,
and to this  conception he was faithful to  the end. For over a year  he had
been beating his way along the south shore of Lake Superior as a clam-digger
and a salmon-fisher or in any  other capacity that brought him food and bed.
His brown, hardening body lived naturally through the half-fierce, half-lazy
work of the bracing days. He knew women early, and since they spoiled him he
became contemptuous of them, of young virgins because they were ignorant, of
the  others   because  they  were  hysterical  about  things  which  in  his
overwhelming  self-absorbtion  he  took for granted. But his  heart was in a
constant,  turbulent riot. The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted
him in his bed at night. A universe of ineffable  gaudiness spun  itself out
in  his brain while the clock  ticked on the wash-stand and  the moon soaked
with wet light his tangled  clothes upon the  floor.  Each night he added to
the  pattern of his  fancies until  drowsiness closed down  upon some  vivid
scene with  an oblivious  embrace. For a while  these  reveries  provided an
outlet for his imagination; they  were a satisfactory hint of  the unreality
of reality, a promise that the rock  of the world was  founded securely on a
fairy's wing. An instinct  toward his future glory  had led him, some months
before, to the small Lutheran college of St. Olaf in southern Minnesota.  He
stayed there two weeks, dismayed at its ferocious indifference  to the drums
of his  destiny, to destiny  itself, and despising  the  janitor's work with
which he was to pay his way through. Then  he drifted back to Lake Superior,
and  he was still searching for  something to do on the day that Dan  Cody's
yacht  dropped anchor  in  the shallows alongshore. Cody was fifty years old
then, a product of the Nevada silver fields, of the Yukon, of every rush for
metal since seventy-five. The transactions  in Montana copper that  made him
many times a millionaire  found  him  physically robust  but on the verge of
soft-mindedness, and, suspecting this, an infinite number  of women tried to
separate him from his money. The none too savory ramifications by which Ella
Kaye,  the newspaper woman, played Madame de Maintenon to  his  weakness and
sent  him  to   sea  in  a  yacht,  were  common  knowledge  to  the  turgid
sub-journalism of 1902. He had been coasting along all too hospitable shores
for five  years  when he turned up as James  Gatz's destiny at Little  Girls
Point. To the young Gatz, resting on  his oars and looking up at  the railed
deck, the yacht represented all  the beauty  and glamour  in  the  world.  I
suppose he smiled at Cody--he had probably discovered that  people liked him
when he smiled. At any  rate Cody asked  him  a  few questions (one of  them
elicited the  brand new name) and found that he was quick and  extravagantly
ambitious. A  few  days  later  he took him to Duluth and bought  him a blue
coat,  six  pair of white  duck  trousers, and  a yachting cap. And when the
TUOLOMEE  left for the West Indies and the Barbary Coast Gatsby left too. He
was  employed in a  vague personal  capacity--while he remained with Cody he
was in turn steward, mate, skipper, secretary, and even jailor, for Dan Cody
sober  knew what lavish doings Dan  Cody drunk might soon be about,  and  he
provided for such contingencies by  reposing more and more  trust in Gatsby.
The  arrangement  lasted five years, during which  the boat went three times
around the Continent. It might have  lasted indefinitely except for the fact
that Ella Kaye came on board one night in Boston and a  week later  Dan Cody
inhospitably  died. I remember the portrait of him up in Gatsby's bedroom, a
gray, florid man with a hard, empty  face--the pioneer debauchee, who during
one phase of American life brought back  to the Eastern  seaboard the savage
violence  of the frontier brothel and saloon. It was indirectly  due to Cody
that  Gatsby drank so little.  Sometimes in the  course of gay parties women
used  to rub champagne into  his  hair; for  himself he formed  the habit of
letting liquor alone. And it was from Cody that he inherited money--a legacy
of twenty-five thousand dollars. He didn't  get it. He  never understood the
legal device that was used  against him,  but what remained of the  millions
went intact  to Ella  Kaye.  He  was  left with  his singularly  appropriate
education;  the   vague  contour  of  Jay  Gatsby  had  filled  out  to  the
substantiality of a  man. He told me  all this very much later, but I've put
it down here  with the idea of exploding  those  first wild rumors about his
antecedents, which weren't even faintly true. Moreover he told it to me at a
time of confusion, when I had reached the point  of believing everything and
nothing about him. So I take advantage of this short halt, while  Gatsby, so
to speak, caught  his breath,  to clear this  set of misconceptions away. It
was a  halt, too, in my association with his  affairs.  For several weeks  I
didn't  see him or hear his voice on the phone--mostly  I  was  in New York,
trotting around with  Jordan and trying to ingratiate myself with her senile
aunt--but finally I  went  over  to his house one Sunday afternoon. I hadn't
been there two minutes when somebody brought Tom Buchanan in  for a drink. I
was startled, naturally, but the really surprising thing was  that it hadn't
happened  before. They  were  a party of three  on horseback--Tom and  a man
named Sloane and a  pretty woman in a brown riding-habit, who had been there
previously. "I'm delighted to see you,"  said Gatsby, standing on his porch.
"I'm delighted that you dropped in." As though they cared! "Sit  right down.
Have  a cigarette or  a cigar." He walked  around the  room quickly, ringing
bells. "I'll  have something  to  drink  for you in just  a minute."  He was
profoundly affected by the fact that Tom was there. But he would  be  uneasy
anyhow until he had given them something, realizing in a vague way that that
was all they came for. Mr.  Sloane wanted nothing. A lemonade? No, thanks. A
little champagne? Nothing at all, thanks. . . . I'm  sorry---- "Did you have
a nice ride?" "Very good roads around here." "I suppose the automobiles----"
"Yeah." Moved by an irresistible  impulse,  Gatsby turned  to  Tom,  who had
accepted the  introduction as  a stranger.  "I believe  we've  met somewhere
before, Mr. Buchanan." "Oh,  yes," said Tom,  gruffly  polite, but obviously
not  remembering. "So we did. I remember very well."  "About two weeks ago."
"That's right.  You  were with  Nick here."  "I  know  your wife," continued
Gatsby,  almost  aggressively.  "That  so?" Tom turned to me. "You live near
here,  Nick?" "Next  door."  "That  so?"  Mr.  Sloane didn't  enter into the
conversation,  but  lounged back  haughtily  in his  chair;  the  woman said
nothing either--until unexpectedly, after two highballs, she became cordial.
"We'll all come over to  your next party, Mr. Gatsby," she  suggested. "What
do you say?" "Certainly; I'd be delighted to have you." "Be ver' nice," said
Mr.  Sloane,  without gratitude. "Well--think  ought  to be starting  home."
"Please don't hurry,"  Gatsby urged them. He had control of himself now, and
he wanted to see more of Tom. "Why don't you--why don't you stay for supper?
I wouldn't be surprised if some other people dropped in from New York." "You
come to supper with ME," said the lady enthusiastically. "Both of you." This
included  me. Mr. Sloane got to  his feet. "Come along," he said--but to her
only. "I  mean  it," she insisted. "I'd  love  to  have you.  Lots of room."
Gatsby looked at me questioningly. He wanted to go, and he  didn't see  that
Mr. Sloane had determined he shouldn't.  "I'm afraid I won't  be able to," I
said. "Well, you  come," she  urged,  concentrating  on  Gatsby. Mr.  Sloane
murmured something close to her ear. "We won't be late if we start now," she
insisted aloud. "I haven't got a horse," said Gatsby. "I used to ride in the
army,  but  I've never bought a horse. I'll have to  follow  you  in my car.
Excuse me for just a minute." The rest of us walked out on  the porch, where
Sloane and  the  lady began  an  impassioned conversation aside. "My  God, I
believe the man's coming," said Tom. "Doesn't he know she doesn't want him?"
"She says she does want him." "She has a big dinner party and he won't  know
a soul there."  He  frowned. "I wonder where  in the  devil he met Daisy. By
God, I may be old-fashioned in my ideas, but women run around too much these
days to suit me. They meet all kinds of crazy fish." Suddenly Mr. Sloane and
the lady walked down the steps and mounted their horses. "Come on," said Mr.
Sloane  to Tom, "we're late. We've got  to go." And then to me: "Tell him we
couldn't wait, will you?" Tom and I shook hands,  the rest of us exchanged a
cool nod, and they trotted quickly down the  drive,  disappearing  under the
August foliage just as Gatsby, with hat and light overcoat in hand, came out
the front door. Tom was evidently perturbed at Daisy's running around alone,
for  on  the following Saturday  night he came with  her to  Gatsby's party.
Perhaps   his   presence  gave   the  evening   its  peculiar   quality   of
oppressiveness--it  stands out in my memory from Gatsby's other parties that
summer. There were the same people, or at least the same sort of people, the
same profusion of  champagne,  the same  many-colored, many-keyed commotion,
but  I felt an unpleasantness  in the air, a pervading harshness that hadn't
been there before. Or perhaps I had merely grown used to it, grown to accept
West Egg as a world complete  in itself, with its own standards and its  own
great  figures,  second to nothing  because it had no consciousness of being
so,  and  now  I  was  looking at  it  again, through  Daisy's  eyes.  It is
invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which  you have
expended your own powers of adjustment. They arrived at twilight, and, as we
strolled  out  among  the  sparkling  hundreds,  Daisy's  voice was  playing
murmurous tricks  in her throat. "These things excite me so," she whispered.
"If you want to kiss  me any time during the evening, Nick, just let me know
and I'll be glad to arrange it for you.  Just mention my name. Or present  a
green card. I'm giving out green----" "Look around," suggested  Gatsby. "I'm
looking around. I'm having a  marvelous----" "You must see the faces of many
people you've  heard about." Tom's arrogant eyes roamed the crowd. "We don't
go around very much," he said.  "In fact, I was just thinking I don't know a
soul here."  "Perhaps  you know  that lady."  Gatsby  indicated  a gorgeous,
scarcely  human orchid of a  woman who sat in state under a white plum tree.
Tom and Daisy  stared, with that peculiarly unreal feeling  that accompanies
the recognition  of  a hitherto  ghostly  celebrity  of  the  movies. "She's
lovely,"  said Daisy. "The man bending over  her is  her director."  He took
them  ceremoniously  from  group  to group:  "Mrs. Buchanan .  .  . and  Mr.
Buchanan----" After an instant's hesitation he added: "the polo player." "Oh
no," objected  Tom  quickly, "not me." But evidently the sound of it pleased
Gatsby, for Tom  remained  "the polo player." for  the rest of  the evening.
"I've never  met  so  many  celebrities!"  Daisy  exclaimed. "I  liked  that
man--what was his name?--with the sort of blue nose." Gatsby identified him,
adding that he  was  a small  producer. "Well,  I liked him anyhow."  "I'd a
little rather not be the polo player," said Tom pleasantly, "I'd rather look
at all these famous  people  in--in oblivion." Daisy  and Gatsby  danced.  I
remember being surprised by his graceful, conservative fox-trot--I had never
seen him  dance before. Then they sauntered over to my house and sat  on the
steps for half  an hour, while at her request  I  remained watchfully in the
garden. "In case there's a fire or a flood," she explained,  "or  any act of
God."  Tom appeared  from  his oblivion  as  we were sitting down  to supper
together. "Do  you mind if  I eat with some people  over here?" he said.  "A
fellow's getting off some funny stuff." "Go ahead," answered Daisy genially,
"and if you want to take down any addresses here's my little gold pencil." .
.  . she looked around after a moment and told me the girl was  "common  but
pretty,"  and I  knew that  except for  the  half-hour she'd been alone with
Gatsby she wasn't having a good time. We were at a particularly tipsy table.
That  was my fault--Gatsby  had been called to  the phone, and  I'd  enjoyed
these same people only two weeks before. But what had amused  me then turned
septic on the air now. "How do you feel, Miss  Baedeker?" The girl addressed
was  trying, unsuccessfully, to  slump against  my shoulder. At this inquiry
she sat up and  opened her eyes. "Wha'?"  A massive and lethargic woman, who
had  been urging  Daisy  to play golf with  her at the local club to-morrow,
spoke in Miss  Baedeker's defence: "Oh, she's all right now. When  she's had
five  or six cocktails she always starts screaming like that. I tell her she
ought  to  leave  it alone." "I do leave  it  alone," affirmed  the  accused
hollowly. "We heard  you yellin