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 Listen, 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.
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.
Do they miss me? she cried ecstatically.
The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath, and theres a persistent wail all night along the north shore.
How gorgeous! Lets go back, Tom. To-morrow! Then she added irrelevantly: You ought to see the baby.
Id like to.
Shes asleep. Shes three years old. Havent you ever seen her?
Never.
Well, you ought to see her. Shes
Tom Buchanan, who had been hovering restlessly about the room, stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder.
What you doing, Nick?
Im a bond man[20].
Who with?
I told him.
Never heard of them, he remarked decisively.
This annoyed me[21].
You will, I answered shortly. You will if you stay in the East.
Oh, Ill stay in the East, dont you worry, he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. Id be a God damned fool to live anywhere else.
At this point Miss Baker said: Absolutely! with such suddenness that I started it was the first word she had 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.
Im stiff, she complained, Ive been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember.
Dont look at me, Daisy retorted, Ive been trying to get you to New York all afternoon.
No, thanks, said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry, Im absolutely in training.
Her host looked at her incredulously. You are! He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. How you ever get anything done is beyond me.
I looked at Miss Baker, wondering what it was she got done. I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage[22], 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.
You live in West Egg, she remarked contemptuously. I know somebody there.
I dont know a single
You must know Gatsby.
Gatsby? demanded Daisy. What Gatsby?
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.
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.
Why candles? objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. In two weeks itll be the longest day in the year. She looked at us all radiantly. Do 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.
We ought to plan something, yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.
All right, said Daisy. Whatll we plan? She turned to me helplessly: What do people plan?
Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.
Look! she complained; I hurt it.
We all looked the knuckle was black and blue.
You did it, Tom, she said accusingly. I know you didnt mean to, but you did do it. Thats what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great, big, hulking physical specimen of a
I hate that word hulking, objected Tom crossly, even in kidding.
Hulking, insisted Daisy.
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.
You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy, I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. Cant you talk about crops or something?
I meant nothing in particular by this remark, but it was taken up in an unexpected way.
Civilizations going to pieces, broke out Tom violently. Ive gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise of the Colored Empires by this man Goddard?
Why, no, I answered, rather surprised by his tone.
Well, its a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we dont look out the white race will be will be utterly submerged. Its all scientific stuff; its been proved.
Toms getting very profound, said Daisy, with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we
Well, these books are all scientific, insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. This fellow has worked out the whole thing. Its up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.
Weve got to beat them down, whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.
You ought to live in California began Miss Baker, but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.
This idea is that were Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are, and After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod, and she winked at me again. And weve produced all the things that go to make civilization oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?
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.
Ill tell you a family secret, she whispered enthusiastically. Its about the butlers nose. Do you want to bear about the butlers nose?
Thats why I came over to-night.
Well, he wasnt 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