{"id":823,"date":"2010-04-13T18:25:18","date_gmt":"2010-04-13T16:25:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beseit.net\/?page_id=823"},"modified":"2024-09-17T20:32:17","modified_gmt":"2024-09-17T18:32:17","slug":"chapter-1","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.beseit.net\/?page_id=823","title":{"rendered":"Chapter 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-823-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.beseit.net\/mp3\/the_great_gatsby\/01_Bradley_Brent_-_Chapter_1_(The_Great_Gatsby).mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.beseit.net\/mp3\/the_great_gatsby\/01_Bradley_Brent_-_Chapter_1_(The_Great_Gatsby).mp3\">http:\/\/www.beseit.net\/mp3\/the_great_gatsby\/01_Bradley_Brent_-_Chapter_1_(The_Great_Gatsby).mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<p>F. Scott Fitzgerald<br \/>\nThe Great Gatsby<br \/>\nChapter 1<br \/>\nIn my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I\u2019ve been turning over in my mind ever since.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhenever you feel like criticizing any one,\u201d he told me, \u201cjust remember that all the people in this world haven\u2019t had the advantages that you\u2019ve had.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He didn\u2019t say any more, but we\u2019ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I\u2019m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought\u2014frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.<\/p>\n<p>And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don\u2019t care what it\u2019s founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction\u2014Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the \u201ccreative temperament.\u201d\u2014it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No\u2014Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.<\/p>\n<p>My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we\u2019re descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather\u2019s brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on to-day.<\/p>\n<p>I never saw this great-uncle, but I\u2019m supposed to look like him\u2014with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in father\u2019s office I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm centre of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe\u2014so I decided to go East and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said, \u201cWhy\u2014ye\u2014es,\u201d with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year, and after various delays I came East, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.<\/p>\n<p>The practical thing was to find rooms in the city, but it was a warm season, and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town, it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather-beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington, and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog\u2014at least I had him for a few days until he ran away\u2014and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman, who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.<\/p>\n<p>It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow do you get to West Egg village?\u201d he asked helplessly.<\/p>\n<p>I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood.<\/p>\n<p>And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.<\/p>\n<p>There was so much to read, for one thing, and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities, and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides. I was rather literary in college\u2014one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the \u201cYale News.\u201d\u2014and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the \u201cwell-rounded man.\u201d This isn\u2019t just an epigram\u2014life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.<\/p>\n<p>It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York\u2014and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. they are not perfect ovals\u2014like the egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed flat at the contact end\u2014but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual confusion to the gulls that fly overhead. to the wingless a more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.<\/p>\n<p>I lived at West Egg, the\u2014well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. my house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. the one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard\u2014it was a factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. it was Gatsby\u2019s mansion. Or, rather, as I didn\u2019t know Mr. Gatsby, it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor\u2019s lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires\u2014all for eighty dollars a month.<\/p>\n<p>Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed, and I\u2019d known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.<\/p>\n<p>Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven\u2014a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax. His family were enormously wealthy\u2014even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach\u2014but now he\u2019d left Chicago and come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance, he\u2019d brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. it was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.<\/p>\n<p>Why they came East I don\u2019t know. They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn\u2019t believe it\u2014I had no sight into Daisy\u2019s heart, but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.<\/p>\n<p>And so 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. Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens\u2014finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.<\/p>\n<p>He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body\u2014he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing, and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage\u2014a cruel body.<\/p>\n<p>His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked\u2014and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow, don\u2019t think my opinion on these matters is final,\u201d he seemed to say, \u201cjust because I\u2019m stronger and more of a man than you are.\u201d We were in the same senior society, and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.<\/p>\n<p>We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve got a nice place here,\u201d he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.<\/p>\n<p>Turning me around by one arm, he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep, pungent roses, and a snub-nosed motor-boat that bumped the tide offshore.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt belonged to Demaine, the oil man.\u201d He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. \u201cWe\u2019ll go inside.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.<\/p>\n<p>The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.<\/p>\n<p>The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless, and with her chin raised a little, as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it\u2014indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.<\/p>\n<p>The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise\u2014she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression\u2014then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m p-paralyzed with happiness.\u201d She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker. (I\u2019ve heard it said that Daisy\u2019s murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)<\/p>\n<p>At any rate, Miss Baker\u2019s lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly, and then quickly tipped her head back again\u2014the object she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self-sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.<\/p>\n<p>I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered \u201cListen,\u201d a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.<\/p>\n<p>I told 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 me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo they miss me?\u201d she cried ecstatically.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath, and there\u2019s a persistent wail all night along the north shore.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow gorgeous! Let\u2019s go back, Tom. To-morrow!\u201d Then she added irrelevantly: \u201cYou ought to see the baby.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019d like to.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe\u2019s asleep. She\u2019s three years old. Haven\u2019t you ever seen her?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNever.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, you ought to see her. She\u2019s\u2014\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tom Buchanan, who had been hovering restlessly about the room, stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat you doing, Nick?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m a bond man.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWho with?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I told him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNever heard of them,\u201d he remarked decisively.<\/p>\n<p>This annoyed me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou will,\u201d I answered shortly. \u201cYou will if you stay in the East.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, I\u2019ll stay in the East, don\u2019t you worry,\u201d he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. \u201cI\u2019d be a God damned fool to live anywhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At this point Miss Baker said: \u201cAbsolutely!\u201d with such suddenness that I started\u2014it was the first word she uttered since I came into the room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m stiff,\u201d she complained, \u201cI\u2019ve been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t look at me,\u201d Daisy retorted, \u201cI\u2019ve been trying to get you to New York all afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, thanks,\u201d said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry, \u201cI\u2019m absolutely in training.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Her host looked at her incredulously.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou are!\u201d He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. \u201cHow you ever get anything done is beyond me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I looked at Miss Baker, wondering what it was she \u201cgot done.\u201d I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her gray sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming, discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou live in West Egg,\u201d she remarked contemptuously. \u201cI know somebody there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know a single\u2014\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou must know Gatsby.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGatsby?\u201d demanded Daisy. \u201cWhat Gatsby?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Before I could reply that he was my neighbor dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine, Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.<\/p>\n<p>Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips, the two young women preceded us out onto a rosy-colored porch, open toward the sunset, where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy CANDLES?\u201d objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. \u201cIn two weeks it\u2019ll be the longest day in the year.\u201d She looked at us all radiantly. \u201cDo you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe ought to plan something,\u201d yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll right,\u201d said Daisy. \u201cWhat\u2019ll we plan?\u201d She turned to me helplessly: \u201cWhat do people plan?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLook!\u201d she complained; \u201cI hurt it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We all looked\u2014the knuckle was black and blue.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou did it, Tom,\u201d she said accusingly. \u201cI know you didn\u2019t mean to, but you DID do it. That\u2019s what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great, big, hulking physical specimen of a\u2014\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI hate that word hulking,\u201d objected Tom crossly, \u201ceven in kidding.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHulking,\u201d insisted Daisy.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire. They were here, and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the West, where an evening was hurried from phase to phase toward its close, in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou make me feel uncivilized, Daisy,\u201d I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. \u201cCan\u2019t you talk about crops or something?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I meant nothing in particular by this remark, but it was taken up in an unexpected way.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCivilization\u2019s going to pieces,\u201d broke out Tom violently. \u201cI\u2019ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read \u2018The Rise of the Colored Empires\u2019 by this man Goddard?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy, no,\u201d I answered, rather surprised by his tone.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, it\u2019s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don\u2019t look out the white race will be\u2014will be utterly submerged. It\u2019s all scientific stuff; it\u2019s been proved.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTom\u2019s getting very profound,\u201d said Daisy, with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. \u201cHe reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we\u2014\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, these books are all scientific,\u201d insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. \u201cThis fellow has worked out the whole thing. It\u2019s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve got to beat them down,\u201d whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou ought to live in California\u2014\u201d began Miss Baker, but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis idea is that we\u2019re Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are, and\u2014\u2014\u201d After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod, and she winked at me again. \u201c\u2014And we\u2019ve produced all the things that go to make civilization\u2014oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There was something pathetic in his concentration, as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned toward me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ll tell you a family secret,\u201d she whispered enthusiastically. \u201cIt\u2019s about the butler\u2019s nose. Do you want to hear about the butler\u2019s nose?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s why I came over to-night.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, he wasn\u2019t always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher for some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred people. He had to polish it from morning till night, until finally it began to affect his nose\u2014\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThings went from bad to worse,\u201d suggested Miss Baker.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes. Things went from bad to worse, until finally he had to give up his position.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened\u2014then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.<\/p>\n<p>The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom\u2019s ear, whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair, and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her, Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a\u2014of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn\u2019t he?\u201d She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation: \u201cAn absolute rose?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only extemporizing, but a stirring warmth flowed from her, as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and excused herself and went into the house.<\/p>\n<p>Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said \u201cSh!\u201d in a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the room beyond, and Miss Baker leaned forward unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbor\u2014\u2014\u201d I said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t talk. I want to hear what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIs something happening?\u201d I inquired innocently.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou mean to say you don\u2019t know?\u201d said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. \u201cI thought everybody knew.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy\u2014\u2014\u201d she said hesitantly, \u201cTom\u2019s got some woman in New York.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGot some woman?\u201d I repeated blankly.<\/p>\n<p>Miss Baker nodded.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner time. Don\u2019t you think?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots, and Tom and Daisy were back at the table.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt couldn\u2019t be helped!\u201d cried Daisy with tense gaiety.<\/p>\n<p>She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me, and continued: \u201cI looked outdoors for a minute, and it\u2019s very romantic outdoors. There\u2019s a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He\u2019s singing away\u2014\u2014\u201d Her voice sang: \u201cIt\u2019s romantic, isn\u2019t it, Tom?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cVery romantic,\u201d he said, and then miserably to me: \u201cIf it\u2019s light enough after dinner, I want to take you down to the stables.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at every one, and yet to avoid all eyes. I couldn\u2019t guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking, but I doubt if even Miss Baker, who seemed to have mastered a certain hardy scepticism, was able utterly to put this fifth guest\u2019s shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing\u2014my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police.<\/p>\n<p>The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker, with several feet of twilight between them, strolled back into the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while, trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf, I followed Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee.<\/p>\n<p>Daisy took her face in her hands as if feeling its lovely shape, and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe don\u2019t know each other very well, Nick,\u201d she said suddenly. \u201cEven if we are cousins. You didn\u2019t come to my wedding.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wasn\u2019t back from the war.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s true.\u201d She hesitated. \u201cWell, I\u2019ve had a very bad time, Nick, and I\u2019m pretty cynical about everything.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she didn\u2019t say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI suppose she talks, and\u2014eats, and everything.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, yes.\u201d She looked at me absently. \u201cListen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cVery much.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019ll show you how I\u2019ve gotten to feel about\u2014things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, 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 away and wept. \u2018all right,\u2019 I said, \u2018I\u2019m glad it\u2019s a girl. And I hope she\u2019ll be a fool\u2014that\u2019s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou see I think everything\u2019s terrible anyhow,\u201d she went on in a convinced way. \u201cEverybody thinks so\u2014the most advanced people. And I KNOW. I\u2019ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.\u201d Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom\u2019s, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. \u201cSophisticated\u2014God, I\u2019m sophisticated!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face, as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.<\/p>\n<p>Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light.<\/p>\n<p>Tom and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the SATURDAY EVENING POST.\u2014the words, murmurous and uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamp-light, bright on his boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms.<\/p>\n<p>When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo be continued,\u201d she said, tossing the magazine on the table, \u201cin our very next issue.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she stood up.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTen o\u2019clock,\u201d she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. \u201cTime for this good girl to go to bed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJordan\u2019s going to play in the tournament to-morrow,\u201d explained Daisy, \u201cover at Westchester.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh\u2014you\u2019re Jordan BAKER.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I knew now why her face was familiar\u2014its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I had heard some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I had forgotten long ago.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGood night,\u201d she said softly. \u201cWake me at eight, won\u2019t you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you\u2019ll get up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOf course you will,\u201d confirmed Daisy. \u201cIn fact I think I\u2019ll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I\u2019ll sort of\u2014oh\u2014fling you together. You know\u2014lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing\u2014\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGood night,\u201d called Miss Baker from the stairs. \u201cI haven\u2019t heard a word.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe\u2019s a nice girl,\u201d said Tom after a moment. \u201cThey oughtn\u2019t to let her run around the country this way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWho oughtn\u2019t to?\u201d inquired Daisy coldly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHer family.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHer family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick\u2019s going to look after her, aren\u2019t you, Nick? She\u2019s going to spend lots of week-ends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very good for her.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIs she from New York?\u201d I asked quickly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFrom Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white\u2014\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDid you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the veranda?\u201d demanded Tom suddenly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDid I?\u201d She looked at me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can\u2019t seem to remember, but I think we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I\u2019m sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know\u2014\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t believe everything you hear, Nick,\u201d he advised me.<\/p>\n<p>I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes later I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood side by side in a cheerful square of light. As I started my motor Daisy peremptorily called: \u201cWait!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI forgot to ask you something, and it\u2019s important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out West.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s right,\u201d corroborated Tom kindly. \u201cWe heard that you were engaged.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s libel. I\u2019m too poor.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut we heard it,\u201d insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again in a flower-like way. \u201cWe heard it from three people, so it must be true.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn\u2019t even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come East. You can\u2019t stop going with an old friend on account of rumors, and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumored into marriage.<\/p>\n<p>Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely rich\u2014nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms\u2014but apparently there were no such intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he \u201chad some woman in New York.\u201d was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.<\/p>\n<p>Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages, where new red gas-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard. The wind had blown off, leaving a loud, bright night, with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight, and turning my head to watch it, I saw that I was not alone\u2014fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbor\u2019s mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens.<\/p>\n<p>I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didn\u2019t call to him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone\u2014he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward\u2014and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.<\/p>\n<p>Table of Contents Next<br \/>\nLast updated on Fri Jun 1 12:33:11 2007 for eBooks@Adelaide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby Chapter 1 In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I\u2019ve been turning over in my mind ever since. \u201cWhenever you feel like criticizing any one,\u201d he told &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.beseit.net\/?page_id=823\">Continua llegint <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8179,"parent":341,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"class_list":["post-823","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bloc-de-notes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beseit.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beseit.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beseit.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beseit.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beseit.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=823"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/www.beseit.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15321,"href":"https:\/\/www.beseit.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/823\/revisions\/15321"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beseit.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/341"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beseit.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beseit.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beseit.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}