The Great Gatsby Page #23

The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and Gatsby's obsession to reunite with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan. The novel was inspired by a youthful romance Fitzgerald had with socialite Ginevra King, and the riotous parties he attended on Long Island's North Shore in 1922

• Fiction
• Novel

								

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-coloured,
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 marvellous—”

“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 foxtrot—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 tomorrow, 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 yelling, so I said to Doc Civet here: ‘There’s somebody
that needs your help, Doc.’ ”

“She’s much obliged, I’m sure,” said another friend, without
gratitude, “but you got her dress all wet when you stuck her head in
the pool.”

“Anything I hate is to get my head stuck in a pool,” mumbled Miss
Baedeker. “They almost drowned me once over in New Jersey.”

“Then you ought to leave it alone,” countered Doctor Civet.

“Speak for yourself!” cried Miss Baedeker violently. “Your hand
shakes. I wouldn’t let you operate on me!”

It was like that. Almost the last thing I remember was standing with
Daisy and watching the moving-picture director and his Star. They were
still under the white-plum tree and their faces were touching except
for a pale, thin ray of moonlight between. It occurred to me that he
had been very slowly bending toward her all evening to attain this
proximity, and even while I watched I saw him stoop one ultimate
degree and kiss at her cheek.

“I like her,” said Daisy, “I think she’s lovely.”

But the rest offended her—and inarguably because it wasn’t a gesture
but an emotion. She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented
“place” that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing
village—appalled by its raw vigour that chafed under the old
euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants
along a shortcut from nothing to nothing. She saw something awful in
the very simplicity she failed to understand.

I sat on the front steps with them while they waited for their car.
It was dark here in front; only the bright door sent ten square feet
of light volleying out into the soft black morning. Sometimes a shadow
moved against a dressing-room blind above, gave way to another shadow,
an indefinite procession of shadows, who rouged and powdered in an
invisible glass.

“Who is this Gatsby anyhow?” demanded Tom suddenly. “Some big
bootlegger?”
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