Chapter Five.
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 Wolfsheim.”
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
when 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.
