took shape in the middle of spring with the arrival of Tom Buchanan. There
was a wholesome bulkiness about his person and his position, and Daisy was
flattered. Doubtless there was a certain struggle and a certain relief. The
letter reached Gatsby while he was still at Oxford. It was dawn now on Long
Island and we went about opening the rest of the windows down-stairs,
filling the house with gray-turning, gold-turning light. The shadow of a
tree fell abruptly across the dew and ghostly birds began to sing among the
blue leaves. There was a slow, pleasant movement in the air, scarcely a
wind, promising a cool, lovely day. "I don't think she ever loved him."
Gatsby turned around from a window and looked at me challengingly. "You must
remember, old sport, she was very excited this afternoon. He told her those
things in a way that frightened her--that made it look as if I was some kind
of cheap sharper. And the result was she hardly knew what she was saying."
He sat down gloomily. "Of course she might have loved him just for a minute,
when they were first married--and loved me more even then, do you see?"
Suddenly he came out with a curious remark. "In any case," he said, "it was
just personal." What could you make of that, except to suspect some
intensity in his conception of the affair that couldn't be measured? He came
back from France when Tom and Daisy were still on their wedding trip, and
made a miserable but irresistible journey to Louisville on the last of his
army pay. He stayed there a week, walking the streets where their footsteps
had clicked together through the November night and revisiting the
out-of-the-way places to which they had driven in her white car. Just as
Daisy's house had always seemed to him more mysterious and gay than other
houses, so his idea of the city itself, even though she was gone from it,
was pervaded with a melancholy beauty. He left feeling that if he had
searched harder, he might have found her--that he was leaving her behind.
The day-coach--he was penniless now--was hot. He went out to the open
vestibule and sat down on a folding-chair, and the station slid away and the
backs of unfamiliar buildings moved by. Then out into the spring fields,
where a yellow trolley raced them for a minute with people in it who might
once have seen the pale magic of her face along the casual street. The track
curved and now it was going away from the sun, which as it sank lower,
seemed to spread itself in benediction over the vanishing city where she had
drawn her breath. He stretched out his hand desperately as if to snatch only
a wisp of air, to save a fragment of the spot that she had made lovely for
him. But it was all going by too fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew
that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever. It was
nine o'clock when we finished breakfast and went out on the porch. The night
had made a sharp difference in the weather and there was an autumn flavor in
the air. The gardener, the last one of Gatsby's former servants, came to the
foot of the steps. "I'm going to drain the pool to-day, Mr. Gatsby.
Leaves'll start falling pretty soon, and then there's always trouble with
the pipes." "Don't do it to-day," Gatsby answered. He turned to me
apologetically. "You know, old sport, I've never used that pool all summer?"
I looked at my watch and stood up. "Twelve minutes to my train." I didn't
want to go to the city. I wasn't worth a decent stroke of work, but it was
more than that--I didn't want to leave Gatsby. I missed that train, and then
another, before I could get myself away. "I'll call you up," I said finally.
"Do, old sport." "I'll call you about noon." We walked slowly down the
steps. "I suppose Daisy'll call too." He looked at me anxiously, as if he
hoped I'd corroborate this. "I suppose so." "Well, good-by." We shook hands
and I started away. Just before I reached the hedge I remembered something
and turned around. "They're a rotten crowd," I shouted across the lawn.
"You're worth the whole damn bunch put together." I've always been glad I
said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved
of him from beginning to end. First he nodded politely, and then his face
broke into that radiant and understanding smile, as if we'd been in ecstatic
cahoots on that fact all the time. His gorgeous pink rag of a suit made a
bright spot of color against the white steps, and I thought of the night
when I first came to his ancestral home, three months before. The lawn and
drive had been crowded with the faces of those who guessed at his
corruption--and he had stood on those steps, concealing his incorruptible
dream, as he waved them good-by. I thanked him for his hospitality. We were
always thanking him for that--I and the others. "Good-by," I called. "I
enjoyed breakfast, Gatsby." Up in the city, I tried for a while to list the
quotations on an interminable amount of stock, then I fell asleep in my
swivel-chair. Just before noon the phone woke me, and I started up with
sweat breaking out on my forehead. It was Jordan Baker; she often called me
up at this hour because the uncertainty of her own movements between hotels
and clubs and private houses made her hard to find in any other way. Usually
her voice came over the wire as something fresh and cool, as if a divot from
a green golf-links had come sailing in at the office window, but this
morning it seemed harsh and dry. "I've left Daisy's house," she said. "I'm
at Hempstead, and I'm going down to Southampton this afternoon." Probably it
had been tactful to leave Daisy's house, but the act annoyed me, and her
next remark made me rigid. "You weren't so nice to me last night." "How
could it have mattered then?" Silence for a moment. Then: "However--I want
to see you." "I want to see you, too." "Suppose I don't go to Southampton,
and come into town this afternoon?" "No--I don't think this afternoon."
"Very well." "It's impossible this afternoon. Various----" We talked like
that for a while, and then abruptly we weren't talking any longer. I don't
know which of us hung up with a sharp click, but I know I didn't care. I
couldn't have talked to her across a tea-table that day if I never talked to
her again in this world. I called Gatsby's house a few minutes later, but
the line was busy. I tried four times; finally an exasperated central told
me the wire was being kept open for long distance from Detroit. Taking out
my time-table, I drew a small circle around the three-fifty train. Then I
leaned back in my chair and tried to think. It was just noon. When I passed
the ashheaps on the train that morning I had crossed deliberately to the
other side of the car. I suppose there'd be a curious crowd around there all
day with little boys searching for dark spots in the dust, and some
garrulous man telling over and over what had happened, until it became less
and less real even to him and he could tell it no longer, and Myrtle
Wilson's tragic achievement was forgotten. Now I want to go back a little
and tell what happened at the garage after we left there the night before.
They had difficulty in locating the sister, Catherine. She must have broken
her rule against drinking that night, for when she arrived she was stupid
with liquor and unable to understand that the ambulance had already gone to
Flushing. When they convinced her of this, she immediately fainted, as if
that was the intolerable part of the affair. Some one, kind or curious, took
her in his car and drove her in the wake of her sister's body. Until long
after midnight a changing crowd lapped up against the front of the garage,
while George Wilson rocked himself back and forth on the couch inside. For a
while the door of the office was open, and every one who came into the
garage glanced irresistibly through it. Finally someone said it was a shame,
and closed the door. Michaelis and several other men were with him; first,
four or five men, later two or three men. Still later Michaelis had to ask
the last stranger to wait there fifteen minutes longer, while he went back
to his own place and made a pot of coffee. After that, he stayed there alone
with Wilson until dawn. About three o'clock the quality of Wilson's
incoherent muttering changed--he grew quieter and began to talk about the
yellow car. He announced that he had a way of finding out whom the yellow
car belonged to, and then he blurted out that a couple of months ago his
wife had come from the city with her face bruised and her nose swollen. But
when he heard himself say this, he flinched and began to cry "Oh, my God!"
again in his groaning voice. Michaelis made a clumsy attempt to distract
him. "How long have you been married, George? Come on there, try and sit
still a minute and answer my question. How long have you been married?"
"Twelve years." "Ever had any children? Come on, George, sit still--I asked
you a question. Did you ever have any children?" The hard brown beetles kept
thudding against the dull light, and whenever Michaelis heard a car go
tearing along the road outside it sounded to him like the car that hadn't
stopped a few hours before. He didn't like to go into the garage, because
the work bench was stained where the body had been lying, so he moved
uncomfortably around the office--he knew every object in it before
morning--and from time to time sat down beside Wilson trying to keep him
more quiet. "Have you got a church you go to sometimes, George? Maybe even
if you haven't been there for a long time? Maybe I could call up the church
and get a priest to come over and he could talk to you, see?" "Don't belong
to any." "You ought to have a church, George, for times like this. You must
have gone to church once. Didn't you get married in a church? Listen,
George, listen to me. Didn't you get married in a church?" "That was a long
time ago." The effort of answering broke the rhythm of his rocking--for a
moment he was silent. Then the same half-knowing, half-bewildered look came
back into his faded eyes. "Look in the drawer there," he said, pointing at
the desk. "Which drawer?" "That drawer--that one." Michaelis opened the
drawer nearest his hand. There was nothing in it but a small, expensive
dog-leash, made of leather and braided silver. It was apparently new.
"This?" he inquired, holding it up. Wilson stared and nodded. "I found it
yesterday afternoon. She tried to tell me about it, but I knew it was
something funny." "You mean your wife bought it?" "She had it wrapped in
tissue paper on her bureau." Michaelis didn't see anything odd in that, and
he gave Wilson a dozen reasons why his wife might have bought the dog-leash.
But conceivably Wilson had heard some of these same explanations before,
from Myrtle, because he began saying "Oh, my God!" again in a whisper--his
comforter left several explanations in the air. "Then he killed her," said
Wilson. His mouth dropped open suddenly. "Who did?" "I have a way of finding
out." "You're morbid, George," said his friend. "This has been a strain to
you and you don't know what you're saying. You'd better try and sit quiet
till morning." "He murdered her." "It was an accident, George." Wilson shook
his head. His eyes narrowed and his mouth widened slightly with the ghost of
a superior "Hm!" "I know," he said definitely, "I'm one of these trusting
fellas and I don't think any harm to nobody, but when I get to know a thing
I know it. It was the man in that car. She ran out to speak to him and he
wouldn't stop." Michaelis had seen this too, but it hadn't occurred to him
that there was any special significance in it. He believed that Mrs. Wilson
had been running away from her husband, rather than trying to stop any
particular car. "How could she of been like that?" "She's a deep one," said
Wilson, as if that answered the question. "Ah-h-h----" He began to rock
again, and Michaelis stood twisting the leash in his hand. "Maybe you got
some friend that I could telephone for, George?" This was a forlorn hope--he
was almost sure that Wilson had no friend: there was not enough of him for
his wife. He was glad a little later when he noticed a change in the room, a
blue quickening by the window, and realized that dawn wasn't far off. About
five o'clock it was blue enough outside to snap off the light. Wilson's
glazed eyes turned out to the ashheaps, where small gray clouds took on
fantastic shape and scurried here and there in the faint dawn wind. "I spoke
to her," he muttered, after a long silence. "I told her she might fool me
but she couldn't fool God. I took her to the window."--with an effort he got
up and walked to the rear window and leaned with his face pressed against
it----" and I said 'God knows what you've been doing, everything you've been
doing. You may fool me, but you can't fool God!'" Standing behind him,
Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the eyes of Doctor T. J.
Eckleburg, which had just emerged, pale and enormous, from the dissolving
night. "God sees everything," repeated Wilson. "That's an advertisement,"
Michaelis assured him. Something made him turn away from the window and look
back into the room. But Wilson stood there a long time, his face close to
the window pane, nodding into the twilight. By six o'clock Michaelis was
worn out, and grateful for the sound of a car stopping outside. It was one
of the watchers of the night before who had promised to come back, so he
cooked breakfast for three, which he and the other man ate together. Wilson
was quieter now, and Michaelis went home to sleep; when he awoke four hours
later and hurried back to the garage, Wilson was gone. His movements--he was
on foot all the time--were afterward traced to Port Roosevelt and then to
Gad's Hill, where he bought a sandwich that he didn't eat, and a cup of
coffee. He must have been tired and walking slowly, for he didn't reach
Gad's Hill until noon. Thus far there was no difficulty in accounting for
his time--there were boys who had seen a man "acting sort of crazy," and
motorists at whom he stared oddly from the side of the road. Then for three
hours he disappeared from view. The police, on the strength of what he said
to Michaelis, that he "had a way of finding out," supposed that he spent
that time going from garage to garage thereabout, inquiring for a yellow
car. On the other hand, no garage man who had seen him ever came forward,
and perhaps he had an easier, surer way of finding out what he wanted to
know. By half-past two he was in West Egg, where he asked someone the way to
Gatsby's house. So by that time he knew Gatsby's name. At two o'clock Gatsby
put on his bathing-suit and left word with the butler that if any one phoned
word was to be brought to him at the pool. He stopped at the garage for a
pneumatic mattress that had amused his guests during the summer, and the
chauffeur helped him pump it up. Then he gave instructions that the open car
wasn't to be taken out under any circumstances--and this was strange,
because the front right fender needed repair. Gatsby shouldered the mattress
and started for the pool. Once he stopped and shifted it a little, and the
chauffeur asked him if he needed help, but he shook his head and in a moment
disappeared among the yellowing trees. No telephone message arrived, but the
butler went without his sleep and waited for it until four o'clock--until
long after there was any one to give it to if it came. I have an idea that
Gatsby himself didn't believe it would come, and perhaps he no longer cared.
If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid
a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up
at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found
what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the
scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor
ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about . . . like
that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees.
The chauffeur--he was one of Wolfshiem's proteges--heard the
shots--afterward he could only say that he hadn't thought anything much
about them. I drove from the station directly to Gatsby's house and my
rushing anxiously up the front steps was the first thing that alarmed any
one. But they knew then, I firmly believe. With scarcely a word said, four
of us, the chauffeur, butler, gardener, and I, hurried down to the pool.
There was a faint, barely perceptible movement of the water as the fresh
flow from one end urged its way toward the drain at the other. with little
ripples that were hardly the shadows of waves, the laden mattress moved
irregularly down the pool. A small gust of wind that scarcely corrugated the
surface was enough to disturb its accidental course with its accidental
burden. The touch of a cluster of leaves revolved it slowly, tracing, like
the leg of compass, a thin red circle in the water. It was after we started
with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener saw Wilson's body a little
way off in the grass, and the holocaust was complete. Chapter 9 After two
years I remember the rest of that day, and that night and the next day, only
as an endless drill of police and photographers and newspaper men in and out
of Gatsby's front door. A rope stretched across the main gate and a
policeman by it kept out the curious, but little boys soon discovered that
they could enter through my yard, and there were always a few of them
clustered open-mouthed about the pool. Someone with a positive manner,
perhaps a detective, used the expression "madman." as he bent over Wilson's
body that afternoon, and the adventitious authority of his voice set the key
for the newspaper reports next morning. Most of those reports were a
nightmare--grotesque, circumstantial, eager, and untrue. When Michaelis's
testimony at the inquest brought to light Wilson's suspicions of his wife I
thought the whole tale would shortly be served up in racy pasquinade--but
Catherine, who might have said anything, didn't say a word. She showed a
surprising amount of character about it too--looked at the coroner with
determined eyes under that corrected brow of hers, and swore that her sister
had never seen Gatsby, that her sister was completely happy with her
husband, that her sister had been into no mischief whatever. She convinced
herself of it, and cried into her handkerchief, as if the very suggestion
was more than she could endure. So Wilson was reduced to a man "deranged by
grief." in order that the case might remain in its simplist form. And it
rested there. But all this part of it seemed remote and unessential. I found
myself on Gatsby's side, and alone. From the moment I telephoned news of the
catastrophe to West Egg village, every surmise about him, and every
practical question, was referred to me. At first I was surprised and
confused; then, as he lay in his house and didn't move or breathe or speak,
hour upon hour, it grew upon me that I was responsible, because no one else
was interested--interested, I mean, with that intense personal interest to
which every one has some vague right at the end. I called up Daisy half an
hour after we found him, called her instinctively and without hesitation.
But she and Tom had gone away early that afternoon, and taken baggage with
them. "Left no address?" "No." "Say when they'd be back?" "No." "Any idea
where they are? How I could reach them?" "I don't know. Can't say." I wanted
to get somebody for him. I wanted to go into the room where he lay and
reassure him: "I'll get somebody for you, Gatsby. Don't worry. Just trust me
and I'll get somebody for you----" Meyer Wolfshiem's name wasn't in the
phone book. The butler gave me his office address on Broadway, and I called
Information, but by the time I had the number it was long after five, and no
one answered the phone. "Will you ring again?" "I've rung them three times."
"It's very important." "Sorry. I'm afraid no one's there." I went back to
the drawing-room and thought for an instant that they were chance visitors,
all these official people who suddenly filled it. But, as they drew back the
sheet and looked at Gatsby with unmoved eyes, his protest continued in my
brain: "Look here, old sport, you've got to get somebody for me. You've got
to try hard. I can't go through this alone." Some one started to ask me
questions, but I broke away and going up-stairs looked hastily through the
unlocked parts of his desk--he'd never told me definitely that his parents
were dead. But there was nothing--only the picture of Dan Cody, a token of
forgotten violence, staring down from the wall. Next morning I sent the
butler to New York with a letter to Wolfshiem, which asked for information
and urged him to come out on the next train. That request seemed superfluous
when I wrote it. I was sure he'd start when he saw the newspapers, just as I
was sure there'd be a wire from Daisy before noon--but neither a wire nor
Mr. Wolfshiem arrived; no one arrived except more police and photographers
and newspaper men. When the butler brought back Wolfshiem's answer I began
to have a feeling of defiance, of scornful solidarity between Gatsby and me
against them all. DEAR MR. CARRAWAY. This has been one of the most terrible
shocks of my life to me I hardly can believe it that it is true at all. Such
a mad act as that man did should make us all think. I cannot come down now
as I am tied up in some very important business and cannot get mixed up in
this thing now. If there is anything I can do a little later let me know in
a letter by Edgar. I hardly know where I am when I hear about a thing like
this and am completely knocked down and out. Yours truly MEYER WOLFSHIEM and
then hasty addenda beneath: Let me know about the funeral etc. do not know
his family at all. When the phone rang that afternoon and Long Distance said
Chicago was calling I thought this would be Daisy at last. But the
connection came through as a man's voice, very thin and far away. "This is
Slagle speaking . . ." "Yes?" The name was unfamiliar. "Hell of a note,
isn't it? Get my wire?" "There haven't been any wires." "Young Parke's in
trouble," he said rapidly. "They picked him up when he handed the bonds over
the counter. They got a circular from New York giving 'em the numbers just
five minutes before. What d'you know about that, hey? You never can tell in
these hick towns----" "Hello!" I interrupted breathlessly. "Look here--this
isn't Mr. Gatsby. Mr. Gatsby's dead." There was a long silence on the other
end of the wire, followed by an exclamation . . . then a quick squawk as the
connection was broken. I think it was on the third day that a telegram
signed Henry C. Gatz arrived from a town in Minnesota. It said only that the
sender was leaving immediately and to postpone the funeral until he came. It
was Gatsby's father, a solemn old man, very helpless and dismayed, bundled
up in a long cheap ulster against the warm September day. His eyes leaked
continuously with excitement, and when I took the bag and umbrella from his
hands he began to pull so incessantly at his sparse gray beard that I had
difficulty in getting off his coat. He was on the point of collapse, so I
took him into the music room and made him sit down while I sent for
something to eat. But he wouldn't eat, and the glass of milk spilled from
his trembling hand. "I saw it in the Chicago newspaper," he said. "It was
all in the Chicago newspaper. I started right away." "I didn't know how to
reach you." His eyes, seeing nothing, moved ceaselessly about the room. "It
was a madman," he said. "He must have been mad." "Wouldn't you like some
coffee?" I urged him. "I don't want anything. I'm all right now, Mr.----"
"Carraway." "Well, I'm all right now. Where have they got Jimmy?" I took him
into the drawing-room, where his son lay, and left him there. Some little
boys had come up on the steps and were looking into the hall; when I told
them who had arrived, they went reluctantly away. After a little while Mr.
Gatz opened the door and came out, his mouth ajar, his face flushed
slightly, his eyes leaking isolated and unpunctual tears. He had reached an
age where death no longer has the quality of ghastly surprise, and when he
looked around him now for the first time and saw the height and splendor of
the hall and the great rooms opening out from it into other rooms, his grief
began to be mixed with an awed pride. I helped him to a bedroom up-stairs;
while he took off his coat and vest I told him that all arrangements had
been deferred until he came. "I didn't know what you'd want, Mr. Gatsby----"
"Gatz is my name." "--Mr. Gatz. I thought you might want to take the body
West." He shook his head. "Jimmy always liked it better down East. He rose
up to his position in the East. Were you a friend of my boy's, Mr.--?" "We
were close friends." "He had a big future before him, you know. He was only
a young man, but he had a lot of brain power here." He touched his head
impressively, and I nodded. "If he'd of lived, he'd of been a great man. A
man like James J. Hill. He'd of helped build up the country." "That's true,"
I said, uncomfortably. He fumbled at the embroidered coverlet, trying to
take it from the bed, and lay down stiffly--was instantly asleep. That night
an obviously frightened person called up, and demanded to know who I was
before he would give his name. "This is Mr. Carraway," I said. "Oh!" He
sounded relieved. "This is Klipspringer." I was relieved too, for that
seemed to promise another friend at Gatsby's grave. I didn't want it to be
in the papers and draw a sightseeing crowd, so I'd been calling up a few
people myself. They were hard to find. "The funeral's to-morrow," I said.
"Three o'clock, here at the house. I wish you'd tell anybody who'd be
interested." "Oh, I will," he broke out hastily. "Of course I'm not likely
to see anybody, but if I do." His tone made me suspicious. "Of course you'll
be there yourself." "Well, I'll certainly try. What I called up about
is----" "Wait a minute," I interrupted. "How about saying you'll come?"
"Well, the fact is--the truth of the matter is that I'm staying with some
people up here in Greenwich, and they rather expect me to be with them
to-morrow. In fact, there's a sort of picnic or something. Of course I'll do
my very best to get away." I ejaculated an unrestrained "Huh!" and he must
have heard me, for he went on nervously: "What I called up about was a pair
of shoes I left there. Iwonder if it'd be too much trouble to have the
butler send them on. You see, they're tennis shoes, and I'm sort of helpless
without them. My address is care of B. F.----" I didn't hear the rest of the
name, because I hung up the receiver. After that I felt a certain shame for
Gatsby--one gentleman to whom I telephoned implied that he had got what he
deserved. However, that was my fault, for he was one of those who used to
sneer most bitterly at Gatsby on the courage of Gatsby's liquor, and I
should have known better than to call him. The morning of the funeral I went
up to New York to see Meyer Wolfshiem; I couldn't seem to reach him any
other way. The door that I pushed open, on the advice of an elevator boy,
was marked "The Swastika Holding Company," and at first there didn't seem to
be any one inside. But when I'd shouted "hello." several times in vain, an
argument broke out behind a partition, and presently a lovely Jewess
appeared at an interior door and scrutinized me with black hostile eyes.
"Nobody's in," she said. "Mr. Wolfshiem's gone to Chicago." The first part
of this was obviously untrue, for someone had begun to whistle "The Rosary,"
tunelessly, inside. "Please say that Mr. Carraway wants to see him." "I
can't get him back from Chicago, can I?" At this moment a voice,
unmistakably Wolfshiem's, called "Stella!" from the other side of the door.
"Leave your name on the desk," she said quickly. "I'll give it to him when
he gets back." "But I know he's there." She took a step toward me and began
to slide her hands indignantly up and down her hips. "You young men think
you can force your way in here any time," she scolded. "We're getting
sickantired of it. When I say he's in Chicago, he's in Chicago." I mentioned
Gatsby. "Oh--h!" She looked at me over again. "Will you just--What was your
name?" She vanished. In a moment Meyer Wolfshiem stood solemnly in the
doorway, holding out both hands. He drew me into his office, remarking in a
reverent voice that it was a sad time for all of us, and offered me a cigar.
"My memory goes back to when I first met him," he said. "A young major just
out of the army and covered over with medals he got in the war. He was so
hard up he had to keep on wearing his uniform because he couldn't buy some
regular clothes. First time I saw him was when he come into Winebrenner's
poolroom at Forty-third Street and asked for a job. He hadn't eat anything
for a couple of days. 'come on have some lunch with me,' I sid. He ate more
than four dollars' worth of food in half an hour." "Did you start him in
business?" I inquired. "Start him! I made him." "Oh." "I raised him up out
of nothing, right out of the gutter. I saw right away he was a
fine-appearing, gentlemanly young man, and when he told me he was an
Oggsford I knew I could use him good. I got him to join up in the American
Legion and he used to stand high there. Right off he did some work for a
client of mine up to Albany. We were so thick like that in everything."--he
held up two bulbous fingers----" always together." I wondered if this
partnership had included the World's Series transaction in 1919. "Now he's
dead," I said after a moment. "You were his closest friend, so I know you'll
want to come to his funeral this afternoon." "I'd like to come." "Well, come
then." The hair in his nostrils quivered slightly, and as he shook his head
his eyes filled with tears. "I can't do it--I can't get mixed up in it," he
said. "There's nothing to get mixed up in. It's all over now." "When a man
gets killed I never like to get mixed up in it in any way. I keep out. When
I was a young man it was different--if a friend of mine died, no matter how,
I stuck with them to the end. You may think that's sentimental, but I mean
it--to the bitter end." I saw that for some reason of his own he was
determined not to come, so I stood up. "Are you a college man?" he inquired
suddenly. For a moment I thought he was going to suggest a "gonnegtion," but
he only nodded and shook my hand. "Let us learn to show our friendship for a
man when he is alive and not after he is dead," he suggested. "After that my
own rule is to let everything alone." When I left his office the sky had
turned dark and I got back to West Egg in a drizzle. After changing my
clothes I went next door and found Mr. Gatz walking up and down excitedly in
the hall. His pride in his son and in his son's possessions was continually
increasing and now he had something to show me. "Jimmy sent me this
picture." He took out his wallet with trembling fingers. "Look there." It
was a photograph of the house, cracked in the corners and dirty with many
hands. He pointed out every detail to me eagerly. "Look there!" and then
sought admiration from my eyes. He had shown it so often that I think it was
more real to him now than the house itself. "Jimmy sent it to me. I think
it's a very pretty picture. It shows up well." "Very well. Had you seen him
lately?" "He come out to see me two years ago and bought me the house I live
in now. Of course we was broke up when he run off from home, but I see now
there was a reason for it. He knew he had a big future in front of him. And
ever since he made a success he was very generous with me." He seemed
reluctant to put away the picture, held it for another minute, lingeringly,
before my eyes. Then he returned the wallet and pulled from his pocket a
ragged old copy of a book called HOPALONG CASSIDY. "Look here, this is a
book he had when he was a boy. It just shows you." He opened it at the back
cover and turned it around for me to see. On the last fly-leaf was printed
the word SCHEDULE, and the date September 12, 1906. and underneath: Rise
from bed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.00 A.M. Dumbbell exercise and
wall-scaling . . . . . . 6.15-6.30 " Study electricity, etc . . . . . . . .
. . . . 7.15-8.15 " Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.30-4.30
P.M. Baseball and sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.30-5.00 " Practice
elocution, poise and how to attain it 5.00-6.00 " Study needed inventions .
. . . . . . . . . . 7.00-9.00 " GENERAL RESOLVES No wasting time at Shafters
or [a name, indecipherable] No more smokeing or chewing Bath every other day
Read one improving book or magazine per week Save $5.00 {crossed out} $3.00
per week Be better to parents "I come across this book by accident," said
the old man. "It just shows you, don't it?" "It just shows you." "Jimmy was
bound to get ahead. He always had some resolves like this or something. Do
you notice what he's got about improving his mind? He was always great for
that. He told me I et like a hog once, and I beat him for it." He was
reluctant to close the book, reading each item aloud and then looking
eagerly at me. I think he rather expected me to copy down the list for my
own use. A little before three the Lutheran minister arrived from Flushing,
and I began to look involuntarily out the windows for other cars. So did
Gatsby's father. And as the time passed and the servants came in and stood
waiting in the hall, his eyes began to blink anxiously, and he spoke of the
rain in a worried, uncertain way. The minister glanced several times at his
watch, so I took him aside and asked him to wait for half an hour. But it
wasn't any use. Nobody came. About five o'clock our procession of three cars
reached the cemetery and stopped in a thick drizzle beside the gate--first a
motor hearse, horribly black and wet, then Mr. Gatz and the minister and I
in the limousine, and a little later four or five servants and the postman
from West Egg in Gatsby's station wagon, all wet to the skin. As we started
through the gate into the cemetery I heard a car stop and then the sound of
someone splashing after us over the soggy ground. I looked around. It was
the man with owl-eyed glasses whom I had found marvelling over Gatsby's
books in the library one night three months before. I'd never seen him since
then. I don't know how he knew about the funeral, or even his name. The rain
poured down his thick glasses, and he took them off and wiped them to see
the protecting canvas unrolled from Gatsby's grave. I tried to think about
Gatsby then for a moment, but he was already too far away, and I could only
remember, without resentment, that Daisy hadn't sent a message or a flower.
Dimly I heard someone murmur, "Blessed are the dead that the rain falls on,"
and then the owl-eyed man said "Amen to that," in a brave voice. We
straggled down quickly through the rain to the cars. Owl-eyes spoke to me by
the gate. "I couldn't get to the house," he remarked. "Neither could anybody
else." "Go on!" He started. "Why, my God! they used to go there by the
hundreds." He took off his glasses and wiped them again, outside and in.
"The poor son-of-a-bitch," he said. One of my most vivid memories is of
coming back West from prep school and later from college at Christmas time.
Those who went farther than Chicago would gather in the old dim Union
Station at six o'clock of a December evening, with a few Chicago friends,
already caught up into their own holiday gayeties, to bid them a hasty
good-by. I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss
This-or-that's and the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving
overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances, and the matchings of
invitations: "Are you going to the Ordways'? the Herseys'? the Schultzes'?"
and the long green tickets clasped tight in our gloved hands. And last the
murky yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul railroad looking
cheerful as Christmas itself on the tracks beside the gate. When we pulled
out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out
beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small
Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air.
We drew in deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold
vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one
strange hour, before we melted indistinguishably into it again. That's my
Middle West--not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the
thrilling returning trains of my youth, and the street lamps and sleigh
bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted
windows on the snow. I am part of that, a little solemn with the feel of
those long winters, a little complacent from growing up in the Carraway
house in a city where dwellings are still called through decades by a
family's name. I see now that this has been a story of the West, after
all--Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and
perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly
unadaptable to Eastern life. Even when the East excited me most, even when I
was most keenly aware of its superiority to the bored, sprawling, swollen
towns beyond the Ohio, with their interminable inquisitions which spared
only the children and the very old--even then it had always for me a quality
of distortion. West Egg, especially, still figures in my more fantastic
dreams. I see it as a night scene by El Greco: a hundred houses, at once
conventional and grotesque, crouching under a sullen, overhanging sky and a
lustreless moon. In the foreground four solemn men in dress suits are
walking along the sidewalk with a stretcher on which lies a drunken woman in
a white evening dress. Her hand, which dangles over the side, sparkles cold
with jewels. Gravely the men turn in at a house--the wrong house. But no one
knows the woman's name, and no one cares. After Gatsby's death the East was
haunted for me like that, distorted beyond my eyes' power of correction. So
when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the
wet laundry stiff on the line I decided to come back home. There was one
thing to be done before I left, an awkward, unpleasant thing that perhaps
had better have been let alone. But I wanted to leave things in order and
not just trust that obliging and indifferent sea to sweep my refuse away. I
saw Jordan Baker and talked over and around what had happened to us
together, and what had happened afterward to me, and she lay perfectly
still, listening, in a big chair. She was dressed to play golf, and I
remember thinking she looked like a good illustration, her chin raised a
little jauntily, her hair the color of an autumn leaf, her face the same
brown tint as the fingerless glove on her knee. When I had finished she told
me without comment that she was engaged to another man. I doubted that,
though there were several she could have married at a nod of her head, but I
pretended to be surprised. For just a minute I wondered if I wasn't making a
mistake, then I thought it all over again quickly and got up to say
good-bye. "Nevertheless you did throw me over," said Jordan suddenly. "You
threw me over on the telephone. I don't give a damn about you now, but it
was a new experience for me, and I felt a little dizzy for a while." We
shook hands. "Oh, and do you remember."--she added----" a conversation we
had once about driving a car?" "Why--not exactly." "You said a bad driver
was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad
driver, didn't I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess. I
thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was
your secret pride." "I'm thirty," I said. "I'm five years too old to lie to
myself and call it honor." She didn't answer. Angry, and half in love with
her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away. One afternoon late in October I
saw Tom Buchanan. He was walking ahead of me along Fifth Avenue in his
alert, aggressive way, his hands out a little from his body as if to fight
off interference, his head moving sharply here and there, adapting itself to
his restless eyes. Just as I slowed up to avoid overtaking him he stopped
and began frowning into the windows of a jewelry store. Suddenly he saw me
and walked back, holding out his hand. "What's the matter, Nick? Do you
object to shaking hands with me?" "Yes. You know what I think of you."
"You're crazy, Nick," he said quickly. "Crazy as hell. I don't know what's
the matter with you." "Tom," I inquired, "what did you say to Wilson that
afternoon?" He stared at me without a word, and I knew I had guessed right
about those missing hours. I started to turn away, but he took a step after
me and grabbed my arm. "I told him the truth," he said. "He came to the door
while we were getting ready to leave, and when I sent down word that we
weren't in he tried to force his way up-stairs. He was crazy enough to kill
me if I hadn't told him who owned the car. His hand was on a revolver in his
pocket every minute he was in the house----" He broke off defiantly. "What
if I did tell him? That fellow had it coming to him. He threw dust into your
eyes just like he did in Daisy's, but he was a tough one. He ran over Myrtle
like you'd run over a dog and never even stopped his car." There was nothing
I could say, except the one unutterable fact that it wasn't true. "And if
you think I didn't have my share of suffering--look here, when I went to
give up that flat and saw that damn box of dog biscuits sitting there on the
sideboard, I sat down and cried like a baby. By God it was awful----" I
couldn't forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to
him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were
careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and
then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever
it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they
had made. . . . I shook hands with him; it seemed silly not to, for I felt
suddenly as though I were talking to a child. Then he went into the jewelry
store to buy a pearl necklace--or perhaps only a pair of cuff buttons--rid
of my provincial squeamishness forever. Gatsby's house was still empty when
I left--the grass on his lawn had grown as long as mine. One of the taxi
drivers in the village never took a fare past the entrance gate without
stopping for a minute and pointing inside; perhaps it was he who drove Daisy
and Gatsby over to East Egg the night of the accident, and perhaps he had
made a story about it all his own. I didn't want to hear it and I avoided
him when I got off the train. I spent my Saturday nights in New York because
those gleaming, dazzling parties of his were with me so vividly that I could
still hear the music and the laughter, faint and incessant, from his garden,
and the cars going up and down his drive. One night I did hear a material
car there, and saw its lights stop at his front steps. But I didn't
investigate. Probably it was some final guest who had been away at the ends
of the earth and didn't know that the party was over. On the last night,
with my trunk packed and my car sold to the grocer, I went over and looked
at that huge incoherent failure of a house once more. On the white steps an
obscene word, scrawled by some boy with a piece of brick, stood out clearly
in the moonlight, and I erased it, drawing my shoe raspingly along the
stone. Then I wandered down to the beach and sprawled out on the sand. Most
of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights
except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the
moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I
became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors'
eyes--a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees
that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the
last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man
must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into
an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face
for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for
wonder. And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of
Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of
Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must
have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know
that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond
the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year
recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--to-morrow we
will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine
morning---- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly
into the past.
was a wholesome bulkiness about his person and his position, and Daisy was
flattered. Doubtless there was a certain struggle and a certain relief. The
letter reached Gatsby while he was still at Oxford. It was dawn now on Long
Island and we went about opening the rest of the windows down-stairs,
filling the house with gray-turning, gold-turning light. The shadow of a
tree fell abruptly across the dew and ghostly birds began to sing among the
blue leaves. There was a slow, pleasant movement in the air, scarcely a
wind, promising a cool, lovely day. "I don't think she ever loved him."
Gatsby turned around from a window and looked at me challengingly. "You must
remember, old sport, she was very excited this afternoon. He told her those
things in a way that frightened her--that made it look as if I was some kind
of cheap sharper. And the result was she hardly knew what she was saying."
He sat down gloomily. "Of course she might have loved him just for a minute,
when they were first married--and loved me more even then, do you see?"
Suddenly he came out with a curious remark. "In any case," he said, "it was
just personal." What could you make of that, except to suspect some
intensity in his conception of the affair that couldn't be measured? He came
back from France when Tom and Daisy were still on their wedding trip, and
made a miserable but irresistible journey to Louisville on the last of his
army pay. He stayed there a week, walking the streets where their footsteps
had clicked together through the November night and revisiting the
out-of-the-way places to which they had driven in her white car. Just as
Daisy's house had always seemed to him more mysterious and gay than other
houses, so his idea of the city itself, even though she was gone from it,
was pervaded with a melancholy beauty. He left feeling that if he had
searched harder, he might have found her--that he was leaving her behind.
The day-coach--he was penniless now--was hot. He went out to the open
vestibule and sat down on a folding-chair, and the station slid away and the
backs of unfamiliar buildings moved by. Then out into the spring fields,
where a yellow trolley raced them for a minute with people in it who might
once have seen the pale magic of her face along the casual street. The track
curved and now it was going away from the sun, which as it sank lower,
seemed to spread itself in benediction over the vanishing city where she had
drawn her breath. He stretched out his hand desperately as if to snatch only
a wisp of air, to save a fragment of the spot that she had made lovely for
him. But it was all going by too fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew
that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever. It was
nine o'clock when we finished breakfast and went out on the porch. The night
had made a sharp difference in the weather and there was an autumn flavor in
the air. The gardener, the last one of Gatsby's former servants, came to the
foot of the steps. "I'm going to drain the pool to-day, Mr. Gatsby.
Leaves'll start falling pretty soon, and then there's always trouble with
the pipes." "Don't do it to-day," Gatsby answered. He turned to me
apologetically. "You know, old sport, I've never used that pool all summer?"
I looked at my watch and stood up. "Twelve minutes to my train." I didn't
want to go to the city. I wasn't worth a decent stroke of work, but it was
more than that--I didn't want to leave Gatsby. I missed that train, and then
another, before I could get myself away. "I'll call you up," I said finally.
"Do, old sport." "I'll call you about noon." We walked slowly down the
steps. "I suppose Daisy'll call too." He looked at me anxiously, as if he
hoped I'd corroborate this. "I suppose so." "Well, good-by." We shook hands
and I started away. Just before I reached the hedge I remembered something
and turned around. "They're a rotten crowd," I shouted across the lawn.
"You're worth the whole damn bunch put together." I've always been glad I
said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved
of him from beginning to end. First he nodded politely, and then his face
broke into that radiant and understanding smile, as if we'd been in ecstatic
cahoots on that fact all the time. His gorgeous pink rag of a suit made a
bright spot of color against the white steps, and I thought of the night
when I first came to his ancestral home, three months before. The lawn and
drive had been crowded with the faces of those who guessed at his
corruption--and he had stood on those steps, concealing his incorruptible
dream, as he waved them good-by. I thanked him for his hospitality. We were
always thanking him for that--I and the others. "Good-by," I called. "I
enjoyed breakfast, Gatsby." Up in the city, I tried for a while to list the
quotations on an interminable amount of stock, then I fell asleep in my
swivel-chair. Just before noon the phone woke me, and I started up with
sweat breaking out on my forehead. It was Jordan Baker; she often called me
up at this hour because the uncertainty of her own movements between hotels
and clubs and private houses made her hard to find in any other way. Usually
her voice came over the wire as something fresh and cool, as if a divot from
a green golf-links had come sailing in at the office window, but this
morning it seemed harsh and dry. "I've left Daisy's house," she said. "I'm
at Hempstead, and I'm going down to Southampton this afternoon." Probably it
had been tactful to leave Daisy's house, but the act annoyed me, and her
next remark made me rigid. "You weren't so nice to me last night." "How
could it have mattered then?" Silence for a moment. Then: "However--I want
to see you." "I want to see you, too." "Suppose I don't go to Southampton,
and come into town this afternoon?" "No--I don't think this afternoon."
"Very well." "It's impossible this afternoon. Various----" We talked like
that for a while, and then abruptly we weren't talking any longer. I don't
know which of us hung up with a sharp click, but I know I didn't care. I
couldn't have talked to her across a tea-table that day if I never talked to
her again in this world. I called Gatsby's house a few minutes later, but
the line was busy. I tried four times; finally an exasperated central told
me the wire was being kept open for long distance from Detroit. Taking out
my time-table, I drew a small circle around the three-fifty train. Then I
leaned back in my chair and tried to think. It was just noon. When I passed
the ashheaps on the train that morning I had crossed deliberately to the
other side of the car. I suppose there'd be a curious crowd around there all
day with little boys searching for dark spots in the dust, and some
garrulous man telling over and over what had happened, until it became less
and less real even to him and he could tell it no longer, and Myrtle
Wilson's tragic achievement was forgotten. Now I want to go back a little
and tell what happened at the garage after we left there the night before.
They had difficulty in locating the sister, Catherine. She must have broken
her rule against drinking that night, for when she arrived she was stupid
with liquor and unable to understand that the ambulance had already gone to
Flushing. When they convinced her of this, she immediately fainted, as if
that was the intolerable part of the affair. Some one, kind or curious, took
her in his car and drove her in the wake of her sister's body. Until long
after midnight a changing crowd lapped up against the front of the garage,
while George Wilson rocked himself back and forth on the couch inside. For a
while the door of the office was open, and every one who came into the
garage glanced irresistibly through it. Finally someone said it was a shame,
and closed the door. Michaelis and several other men were with him; first,
four or five men, later two or three men. Still later Michaelis had to ask
the last stranger to wait there fifteen minutes longer, while he went back
to his own place and made a pot of coffee. After that, he stayed there alone
with Wilson until dawn. About three o'clock the quality of Wilson's
incoherent muttering changed--he grew quieter and began to talk about the
yellow car. He announced that he had a way of finding out whom the yellow
car belonged to, and then he blurted out that a couple of months ago his
wife had come from the city with her face bruised and her nose swollen. But
when he heard himself say this, he flinched and began to cry "Oh, my God!"
again in his groaning voice. Michaelis made a clumsy attempt to distract
him. "How long have you been married, George? Come on there, try and sit
still a minute and answer my question. How long have you been married?"
"Twelve years." "Ever had any children? Come on, George, sit still--I asked
you a question. Did you ever have any children?" The hard brown beetles kept
thudding against the dull light, and whenever Michaelis heard a car go
tearing along the road outside it sounded to him like the car that hadn't
stopped a few hours before. He didn't like to go into the garage, because
the work bench was stained where the body had been lying, so he moved
uncomfortably around the office--he knew every object in it before
morning--and from time to time sat down beside Wilson trying to keep him
more quiet. "Have you got a church you go to sometimes, George? Maybe even
if you haven't been there for a long time? Maybe I could call up the church
and get a priest to come over and he could talk to you, see?" "Don't belong
to any." "You ought to have a church, George, for times like this. You must
have gone to church once. Didn't you get married in a church? Listen,
George, listen to me. Didn't you get married in a church?" "That was a long
time ago." The effort of answering broke the rhythm of his rocking--for a
moment he was silent. Then the same half-knowing, half-bewildered look came
back into his faded eyes. "Look in the drawer there," he said, pointing at
the desk. "Which drawer?" "That drawer--that one." Michaelis opened the
drawer nearest his hand. There was nothing in it but a small, expensive
dog-leash, made of leather and braided silver. It was apparently new.
"This?" he inquired, holding it up. Wilson stared and nodded. "I found it
yesterday afternoon. She tried to tell me about it, but I knew it was
something funny." "You mean your wife bought it?" "She had it wrapped in
tissue paper on her bureau." Michaelis didn't see anything odd in that, and
he gave Wilson a dozen reasons why his wife might have bought the dog-leash.
But conceivably Wilson had heard some of these same explanations before,
from Myrtle, because he began saying "Oh, my God!" again in a whisper--his
comforter left several explanations in the air. "Then he killed her," said
Wilson. His mouth dropped open suddenly. "Who did?" "I have a way of finding
out." "You're morbid, George," said his friend. "This has been a strain to
you and you don't know what you're saying. You'd better try and sit quiet
till morning." "He murdered her." "It was an accident, George." Wilson shook
his head. His eyes narrowed and his mouth widened slightly with the ghost of
a superior "Hm!" "I know," he said definitely, "I'm one of these trusting
fellas and I don't think any harm to nobody, but when I get to know a thing
I know it. It was the man in that car. She ran out to speak to him and he
wouldn't stop." Michaelis had seen this too, but it hadn't occurred to him
that there was any special significance in it. He believed that Mrs. Wilson
had been running away from her husband, rather than trying to stop any
particular car. "How could she of been like that?" "She's a deep one," said
Wilson, as if that answered the question. "Ah-h-h----" He began to rock
again, and Michaelis stood twisting the leash in his hand. "Maybe you got
some friend that I could telephone for, George?" This was a forlorn hope--he
was almost sure that Wilson had no friend: there was not enough of him for
his wife. He was glad a little later when he noticed a change in the room, a
blue quickening by the window, and realized that dawn wasn't far off. About
five o'clock it was blue enough outside to snap off the light. Wilson's
glazed eyes turned out to the ashheaps, where small gray clouds took on
fantastic shape and scurried here and there in the faint dawn wind. "I spoke
to her," he muttered, after a long silence. "I told her she might fool me
but she couldn't fool God. I took her to the window."--with an effort he got
up and walked to the rear window and leaned with his face pressed against
it----" and I said 'God knows what you've been doing, everything you've been
doing. You may fool me, but you can't fool God!'" Standing behind him,
Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the eyes of Doctor T. J.
Eckleburg, which had just emerged, pale and enormous, from the dissolving
night. "God sees everything," repeated Wilson. "That's an advertisement,"
Michaelis assured him. Something made him turn away from the window and look
back into the room. But Wilson stood there a long time, his face close to
the window pane, nodding into the twilight. By six o'clock Michaelis was
worn out, and grateful for the sound of a car stopping outside. It was one
of the watchers of the night before who had promised to come back, so he
cooked breakfast for three, which he and the other man ate together. Wilson
was quieter now, and Michaelis went home to sleep; when he awoke four hours
later and hurried back to the garage, Wilson was gone. His movements--he was
on foot all the time--were afterward traced to Port Roosevelt and then to
Gad's Hill, where he bought a sandwich that he didn't eat, and a cup of
coffee. He must have been tired and walking slowly, for he didn't reach
Gad's Hill until noon. Thus far there was no difficulty in accounting for
his time--there were boys who had seen a man "acting sort of crazy," and
motorists at whom he stared oddly from the side of the road. Then for three
hours he disappeared from view. The police, on the strength of what he said
to Michaelis, that he "had a way of finding out," supposed that he spent
that time going from garage to garage thereabout, inquiring for a yellow
car. On the other hand, no garage man who had seen him ever came forward,
and perhaps he had an easier, surer way of finding out what he wanted to
know. By half-past two he was in West Egg, where he asked someone the way to
Gatsby's house. So by that time he knew Gatsby's name. At two o'clock Gatsby
put on his bathing-suit and left word with the butler that if any one phoned
word was to be brought to him at the pool. He stopped at the garage for a
pneumatic mattress that had amused his guests during the summer, and the
chauffeur helped him pump it up. Then he gave instructions that the open car
wasn't to be taken out under any circumstances--and this was strange,
because the front right fender needed repair. Gatsby shouldered the mattress
and started for the pool. Once he stopped and shifted it a little, and the
chauffeur asked him if he needed help, but he shook his head and in a moment
disappeared among the yellowing trees. No telephone message arrived, but the
butler went without his sleep and waited for it until four o'clock--until
long after there was any one to give it to if it came. I have an idea that
Gatsby himself didn't believe it would come, and perhaps he no longer cared.
If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid
a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up
at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found
what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the
scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor
ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about . . . like
that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees.
The chauffeur--he was one of Wolfshiem's proteges--heard the
shots--afterward he could only say that he hadn't thought anything much
about them. I drove from the station directly to Gatsby's house and my
rushing anxiously up the front steps was the first thing that alarmed any
one. But they knew then, I firmly believe. With scarcely a word said, four
of us, the chauffeur, butler, gardener, and I, hurried down to the pool.
There was a faint, barely perceptible movement of the water as the fresh
flow from one end urged its way toward the drain at the other. with little
ripples that were hardly the shadows of waves, the laden mattress moved
irregularly down the pool. A small gust of wind that scarcely corrugated the
surface was enough to disturb its accidental course with its accidental
burden. The touch of a cluster of leaves revolved it slowly, tracing, like
the leg of compass, a thin red circle in the water. It was after we started
with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener saw Wilson's body a little
way off in the grass, and the holocaust was complete. Chapter 9 After two
years I remember the rest of that day, and that night and the next day, only
as an endless drill of police and photographers and newspaper men in and out
of Gatsby's front door. A rope stretched across the main gate and a
policeman by it kept out the curious, but little boys soon discovered that
they could enter through my yard, and there were always a few of them
clustered open-mouthed about the pool. Someone with a positive manner,
perhaps a detective, used the expression "madman." as he bent over Wilson's
body that afternoon, and the adventitious authority of his voice set the key
for the newspaper reports next morning. Most of those reports were a
nightmare--grotesque, circumstantial, eager, and untrue. When Michaelis's
testimony at the inquest brought to light Wilson's suspicions of his wife I
thought the whole tale would shortly be served up in racy pasquinade--but
Catherine, who might have said anything, didn't say a word. She showed a
surprising amount of character about it too--looked at the coroner with
determined eyes under that corrected brow of hers, and swore that her sister
had never seen Gatsby, that her sister was completely happy with her
husband, that her sister had been into no mischief whatever. She convinced
herself of it, and cried into her handkerchief, as if the very suggestion
was more than she could endure. So Wilson was reduced to a man "deranged by
grief." in order that the case might remain in its simplist form. And it
rested there. But all this part of it seemed remote and unessential. I found
myself on Gatsby's side, and alone. From the moment I telephoned news of the
catastrophe to West Egg village, every surmise about him, and every
practical question, was referred to me. At first I was surprised and
confused; then, as he lay in his house and didn't move or breathe or speak,
hour upon hour, it grew upon me that I was responsible, because no one else
was interested--interested, I mean, with that intense personal interest to
which every one has some vague right at the end. I called up Daisy half an
hour after we found him, called her instinctively and without hesitation.
But she and Tom had gone away early that afternoon, and taken baggage with
them. "Left no address?" "No." "Say when they'd be back?" "No." "Any idea
where they are? How I could reach them?" "I don't know. Can't say." I wanted
to get somebody for him. I wanted to go into the room where he lay and
reassure him: "I'll get somebody for you, Gatsby. Don't worry. Just trust me
and I'll get somebody for you----" Meyer Wolfshiem's name wasn't in the
phone book. The butler gave me his office address on Broadway, and I called
Information, but by the time I had the number it was long after five, and no
one answered the phone. "Will you ring again?" "I've rung them three times."
"It's very important." "Sorry. I'm afraid no one's there." I went back to
the drawing-room and thought for an instant that they were chance visitors,
all these official people who suddenly filled it. But, as they drew back the
sheet and looked at Gatsby with unmoved eyes, his protest continued in my
brain: "Look here, old sport, you've got to get somebody for me. You've got
to try hard. I can't go through this alone." Some one started to ask me
questions, but I broke away and going up-stairs looked hastily through the
unlocked parts of his desk--he'd never told me definitely that his parents
were dead. But there was nothing--only the picture of Dan Cody, a token of
forgotten violence, staring down from the wall. Next morning I sent the
butler to New York with a letter to Wolfshiem, which asked for information
and urged him to come out on the next train. That request seemed superfluous
when I wrote it. I was sure he'd start when he saw the newspapers, just as I
was sure there'd be a wire from Daisy before noon--but neither a wire nor
Mr. Wolfshiem arrived; no one arrived except more police and photographers
and newspaper men. When the butler brought back Wolfshiem's answer I began
to have a feeling of defiance, of scornful solidarity between Gatsby and me
against them all. DEAR MR. CARRAWAY. This has been one of the most terrible
shocks of my life to me I hardly can believe it that it is true at all. Such
a mad act as that man did should make us all think. I cannot come down now
as I am tied up in some very important business and cannot get mixed up in
this thing now. If there is anything I can do a little later let me know in
a letter by Edgar. I hardly know where I am when I hear about a thing like
this and am completely knocked down and out. Yours truly MEYER WOLFSHIEM and
then hasty addenda beneath: Let me know about the funeral etc. do not know
his family at all. When the phone rang that afternoon and Long Distance said
Chicago was calling I thought this would be Daisy at last. But the
connection came through as a man's voice, very thin and far away. "This is
Slagle speaking . . ." "Yes?" The name was unfamiliar. "Hell of a note,
isn't it? Get my wire?" "There haven't been any wires." "Young Parke's in
trouble," he said rapidly. "They picked him up when he handed the bonds over
the counter. They got a circular from New York giving 'em the numbers just
five minutes before. What d'you know about that, hey? You never can tell in
these hick towns----" "Hello!" I interrupted breathlessly. "Look here--this
isn't Mr. Gatsby. Mr. Gatsby's dead." There was a long silence on the other
end of the wire, followed by an exclamation . . . then a quick squawk as the
connection was broken. I think it was on the third day that a telegram
signed Henry C. Gatz arrived from a town in Minnesota. It said only that the
sender was leaving immediately and to postpone the funeral until he came. It
was Gatsby's father, a solemn old man, very helpless and dismayed, bundled
up in a long cheap ulster against the warm September day. His eyes leaked
continuously with excitement, and when I took the bag and umbrella from his
hands he began to pull so incessantly at his sparse gray beard that I had
difficulty in getting off his coat. He was on the point of collapse, so I
took him into the music room and made him sit down while I sent for
something to eat. But he wouldn't eat, and the glass of milk spilled from
his trembling hand. "I saw it in the Chicago newspaper," he said. "It was
all in the Chicago newspaper. I started right away." "I didn't know how to
reach you." His eyes, seeing nothing, moved ceaselessly about the room. "It
was a madman," he said. "He must have been mad." "Wouldn't you like some
coffee?" I urged him. "I don't want anything. I'm all right now, Mr.----"
"Carraway." "Well, I'm all right now. Where have they got Jimmy?" I took him
into the drawing-room, where his son lay, and left him there. Some little
boys had come up on the steps and were looking into the hall; when I told
them who had arrived, they went reluctantly away. After a little while Mr.
Gatz opened the door and came out, his mouth ajar, his face flushed
slightly, his eyes leaking isolated and unpunctual tears. He had reached an
age where death no longer has the quality of ghastly surprise, and when he
looked around him now for the first time and saw the height and splendor of
the hall and the great rooms opening out from it into other rooms, his grief
began to be mixed with an awed pride. I helped him to a bedroom up-stairs;
while he took off his coat and vest I told him that all arrangements had
been deferred until he came. "I didn't know what you'd want, Mr. Gatsby----"
"Gatz is my name." "--Mr. Gatz. I thought you might want to take the body
West." He shook his head. "Jimmy always liked it better down East. He rose
up to his position in the East. Were you a friend of my boy's, Mr.--?" "We
were close friends." "He had a big future before him, you know. He was only
a young man, but he had a lot of brain power here." He touched his head
impressively, and I nodded. "If he'd of lived, he'd of been a great man. A
man like James J. Hill. He'd of helped build up the country." "That's true,"
I said, uncomfortably. He fumbled at the embroidered coverlet, trying to
take it from the bed, and lay down stiffly--was instantly asleep. That night
an obviously frightened person called up, and demanded to know who I was
before he would give his name. "This is Mr. Carraway," I said. "Oh!" He
sounded relieved. "This is Klipspringer." I was relieved too, for that
seemed to promise another friend at Gatsby's grave. I didn't want it to be
in the papers and draw a sightseeing crowd, so I'd been calling up a few
people myself. They were hard to find. "The funeral's to-morrow," I said.
"Three o'clock, here at the house. I wish you'd tell anybody who'd be
interested." "Oh, I will," he broke out hastily. "Of course I'm not likely
to see anybody, but if I do." His tone made me suspicious. "Of course you'll
be there yourself." "Well, I'll certainly try. What I called up about
is----" "Wait a minute," I interrupted. "How about saying you'll come?"
"Well, the fact is--the truth of the matter is that I'm staying with some
people up here in Greenwich, and they rather expect me to be with them
to-morrow. In fact, there's a sort of picnic or something. Of course I'll do
my very best to get away." I ejaculated an unrestrained "Huh!" and he must
have heard me, for he went on nervously: "What I called up about was a pair
of shoes I left there. Iwonder if it'd be too much trouble to have the
butler send them on. You see, they're tennis shoes, and I'm sort of helpless
without them. My address is care of B. F.----" I didn't hear the rest of the
name, because I hung up the receiver. After that I felt a certain shame for
Gatsby--one gentleman to whom I telephoned implied that he had got what he
deserved. However, that was my fault, for he was one of those who used to
sneer most bitterly at Gatsby on the courage of Gatsby's liquor, and I
should have known better than to call him. The morning of the funeral I went
up to New York to see Meyer Wolfshiem; I couldn't seem to reach him any
other way. The door that I pushed open, on the advice of an elevator boy,
was marked "The Swastika Holding Company," and at first there didn't seem to
be any one inside. But when I'd shouted "hello." several times in vain, an
argument broke out behind a partition, and presently a lovely Jewess
appeared at an interior door and scrutinized me with black hostile eyes.
"Nobody's in," she said. "Mr. Wolfshiem's gone to Chicago." The first part
of this was obviously untrue, for someone had begun to whistle "The Rosary,"
tunelessly, inside. "Please say that Mr. Carraway wants to see him." "I
can't get him back from Chicago, can I?" At this moment a voice,
unmistakably Wolfshiem's, called "Stella!" from the other side of the door.
"Leave your name on the desk," she said quickly. "I'll give it to him when
he gets back." "But I know he's there." She took a step toward me and began
to slide her hands indignantly up and down her hips. "You young men think
you can force your way in here any time," she scolded. "We're getting
sickantired of it. When I say he's in Chicago, he's in Chicago." I mentioned
Gatsby. "Oh--h!" She looked at me over again. "Will you just--What was your
name?" She vanished. In a moment Meyer Wolfshiem stood solemnly in the
doorway, holding out both hands. He drew me into his office, remarking in a
reverent voice that it was a sad time for all of us, and offered me a cigar.
"My memory goes back to when I first met him," he said. "A young major just
out of the army and covered over with medals he got in the war. He was so
hard up he had to keep on wearing his uniform because he couldn't buy some
regular clothes. First time I saw him was when he come into Winebrenner's
poolroom at Forty-third Street and asked for a job. He hadn't eat anything
for a couple of days. 'come on have some lunch with me,' I sid. He ate more
than four dollars' worth of food in half an hour." "Did you start him in
business?" I inquired. "Start him! I made him." "Oh." "I raised him up out
of nothing, right out of the gutter. I saw right away he was a
fine-appearing, gentlemanly young man, and when he told me he was an
Oggsford I knew I could use him good. I got him to join up in the American
Legion and he used to stand high there. Right off he did some work for a
client of mine up to Albany. We were so thick like that in everything."--he
held up two bulbous fingers----" always together." I wondered if this
partnership had included the World's Series transaction in 1919. "Now he's
dead," I said after a moment. "You were his closest friend, so I know you'll
want to come to his funeral this afternoon." "I'd like to come." "Well, come
then." The hair in his nostrils quivered slightly, and as he shook his head
his eyes filled with tears. "I can't do it--I can't get mixed up in it," he
said. "There's nothing to get mixed up in. It's all over now." "When a man
gets killed I never like to get mixed up in it in any way. I keep out. When
I was a young man it was different--if a friend of mine died, no matter how,
I stuck with them to the end. You may think that's sentimental, but I mean
it--to the bitter end." I saw that for some reason of his own he was
determined not to come, so I stood up. "Are you a college man?" he inquired
suddenly. For a moment I thought he was going to suggest a "gonnegtion," but
he only nodded and shook my hand. "Let us learn to show our friendship for a
man when he is alive and not after he is dead," he suggested. "After that my
own rule is to let everything alone." When I left his office the sky had
turned dark and I got back to West Egg in a drizzle. After changing my
clothes I went next door and found Mr. Gatz walking up and down excitedly in
the hall. His pride in his son and in his son's possessions was continually
increasing and now he had something to show me. "Jimmy sent me this
picture." He took out his wallet with trembling fingers. "Look there." It
was a photograph of the house, cracked in the corners and dirty with many
hands. He pointed out every detail to me eagerly. "Look there!" and then
sought admiration from my eyes. He had shown it so often that I think it was
more real to him now than the house itself. "Jimmy sent it to me. I think
it's a very pretty picture. It shows up well." "Very well. Had you seen him
lately?" "He come out to see me two years ago and bought me the house I live
in now. Of course we was broke up when he run off from home, but I see now
there was a reason for it. He knew he had a big future in front of him. And
ever since he made a success he was very generous with me." He seemed
reluctant to put away the picture, held it for another minute, lingeringly,
before my eyes. Then he returned the wallet and pulled from his pocket a
ragged old copy of a book called HOPALONG CASSIDY. "Look here, this is a
book he had when he was a boy. It just shows you." He opened it at the back
cover and turned it around for me to see. On the last fly-leaf was printed
the word SCHEDULE, and the date September 12, 1906. and underneath: Rise
from bed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.00 A.M. Dumbbell exercise and
wall-scaling . . . . . . 6.15-6.30 " Study electricity, etc . . . . . . . .
. . . . 7.15-8.15 " Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.30-4.30
P.M. Baseball and sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.30-5.00 " Practice
elocution, poise and how to attain it 5.00-6.00 " Study needed inventions .
. . . . . . . . . . 7.00-9.00 " GENERAL RESOLVES No wasting time at Shafters
or [a name, indecipherable] No more smokeing or chewing Bath every other day
Read one improving book or magazine per week Save $5.00 {crossed out} $3.00
per week Be better to parents "I come across this book by accident," said
the old man. "It just shows you, don't it?" "It just shows you." "Jimmy was
bound to get ahead. He always had some resolves like this or something. Do
you notice what he's got about improving his mind? He was always great for
that. He told me I et like a hog once, and I beat him for it." He was
reluctant to close the book, reading each item aloud and then looking
eagerly at me. I think he rather expected me to copy down the list for my
own use. A little before three the Lutheran minister arrived from Flushing,
and I began to look involuntarily out the windows for other cars. So did
Gatsby's father. And as the time passed and the servants came in and stood
waiting in the hall, his eyes began to blink anxiously, and he spoke of the
rain in a worried, uncertain way. The minister glanced several times at his
watch, so I took him aside and asked him to wait for half an hour. But it
wasn't any use. Nobody came. About five o'clock our procession of three cars
reached the cemetery and stopped in a thick drizzle beside the gate--first a
motor hearse, horribly black and wet, then Mr. Gatz and the minister and I
in the limousine, and a little later four or five servants and the postman
from West Egg in Gatsby's station wagon, all wet to the skin. As we started
through the gate into the cemetery I heard a car stop and then the sound of
someone splashing after us over the soggy ground. I looked around. It was
the man with owl-eyed glasses whom I had found marvelling over Gatsby's
books in the library one night three months before. I'd never seen him since
then. I don't know how he knew about the funeral, or even his name. The rain
poured down his thick glasses, and he took them off and wiped them to see
the protecting canvas unrolled from Gatsby's grave. I tried to think about
Gatsby then for a moment, but he was already too far away, and I could only
remember, without resentment, that Daisy hadn't sent a message or a flower.
Dimly I heard someone murmur, "Blessed are the dead that the rain falls on,"
and then the owl-eyed man said "Amen to that," in a brave voice. We
straggled down quickly through the rain to the cars. Owl-eyes spoke to me by
the gate. "I couldn't get to the house," he remarked. "Neither could anybody
else." "Go on!" He started. "Why, my God! they used to go there by the
hundreds." He took off his glasses and wiped them again, outside and in.
"The poor son-of-a-bitch," he said. One of my most vivid memories is of
coming back West from prep school and later from college at Christmas time.
Those who went farther than Chicago would gather in the old dim Union
Station at six o'clock of a December evening, with a few Chicago friends,
already caught up into their own holiday gayeties, to bid them a hasty
good-by. I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss
This-or-that's and the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving
overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances, and the matchings of
invitations: "Are you going to the Ordways'? the Herseys'? the Schultzes'?"
and the long green tickets clasped tight in our gloved hands. And last the
murky yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul railroad looking
cheerful as Christmas itself on the tracks beside the gate. When we pulled
out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out
beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small
Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air.
We drew in deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold
vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one
strange hour, before we melted indistinguishably into it again. That's my
Middle West--not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the
thrilling returning trains of my youth, and the street lamps and sleigh
bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted
windows on the snow. I am part of that, a little solemn with the feel of
those long winters, a little complacent from growing up in the Carraway
house in a city where dwellings are still called through decades by a
family's name. I see now that this has been a story of the West, after
all--Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and
perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly
unadaptable to Eastern life. Even when the East excited me most, even when I
was most keenly aware of its superiority to the bored, sprawling, swollen
towns beyond the Ohio, with their interminable inquisitions which spared
only the children and the very old--even then it had always for me a quality
of distortion. West Egg, especially, still figures in my more fantastic
dreams. I see it as a night scene by El Greco: a hundred houses, at once
conventional and grotesque, crouching under a sullen, overhanging sky and a
lustreless moon. In the foreground four solemn men in dress suits are
walking along the sidewalk with a stretcher on which lies a drunken woman in
a white evening dress. Her hand, which dangles over the side, sparkles cold
with jewels. Gravely the men turn in at a house--the wrong house. But no one
knows the woman's name, and no one cares. After Gatsby's death the East was
haunted for me like that, distorted beyond my eyes' power of correction. So
when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the
wet laundry stiff on the line I decided to come back home. There was one
thing to be done before I left, an awkward, unpleasant thing that perhaps
had better have been let alone. But I wanted to leave things in order and
not just trust that obliging and indifferent sea to sweep my refuse away. I
saw Jordan Baker and talked over and around what had happened to us
together, and what had happened afterward to me, and she lay perfectly
still, listening, in a big chair. She was dressed to play golf, and I
remember thinking she looked like a good illustration, her chin raised a
little jauntily, her hair the color of an autumn leaf, her face the same
brown tint as the fingerless glove on her knee. When I had finished she told
me without comment that she was engaged to another man. I doubted that,
though there were several she could have married at a nod of her head, but I
pretended to be surprised. For just a minute I wondered if I wasn't making a
mistake, then I thought it all over again quickly and got up to say
good-bye. "Nevertheless you did throw me over," said Jordan suddenly. "You
threw me over on the telephone. I don't give a damn about you now, but it
was a new experience for me, and I felt a little dizzy for a while." We
shook hands. "Oh, and do you remember."--she added----" a conversation we
had once about driving a car?" "Why--not exactly." "You said a bad driver
was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad
driver, didn't I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess. I
thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was
your secret pride." "I'm thirty," I said. "I'm five years too old to lie to
myself and call it honor." She didn't answer. Angry, and half in love with
her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away. One afternoon late in October I
saw Tom Buchanan. He was walking ahead of me along Fifth Avenue in his
alert, aggressive way, his hands out a little from his body as if to fight
off interference, his head moving sharply here and there, adapting itself to
his restless eyes. Just as I slowed up to avoid overtaking him he stopped
and began frowning into the windows of a jewelry store. Suddenly he saw me
and walked back, holding out his hand. "What's the matter, Nick? Do you
object to shaking hands with me?" "Yes. You know what I think of you."
"You're crazy, Nick," he said quickly. "Crazy as hell. I don't know what's
the matter with you." "Tom," I inquired, "what did you say to Wilson that
afternoon?" He stared at me without a word, and I knew I had guessed right
about those missing hours. I started to turn away, but he took a step after
me and grabbed my arm. "I told him the truth," he said. "He came to the door
while we were getting ready to leave, and when I sent down word that we
weren't in he tried to force his way up-stairs. He was crazy enough to kill
me if I hadn't told him who owned the car. His hand was on a revolver in his
pocket every minute he was in the house----" He broke off defiantly. "What
if I did tell him? That fellow had it coming to him. He threw dust into your
eyes just like he did in Daisy's, but he was a tough one. He ran over Myrtle
like you'd run over a dog and never even stopped his car." There was nothing
I could say, except the one unutterable fact that it wasn't true. "And if
you think I didn't have my share of suffering--look here, when I went to
give up that flat and saw that damn box of dog biscuits sitting there on the
sideboard, I sat down and cried like a baby. By God it was awful----" I
couldn't forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to
him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were
careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and
then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever
it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they
had made. . . . I shook hands with him; it seemed silly not to, for I felt
suddenly as though I were talking to a child. Then he went into the jewelry
store to buy a pearl necklace--or perhaps only a pair of cuff buttons--rid
of my provincial squeamishness forever. Gatsby's house was still empty when
I left--the grass on his lawn had grown as long as mine. One of the taxi
drivers in the village never took a fare past the entrance gate without
stopping for a minute and pointing inside; perhaps it was he who drove Daisy
and Gatsby over to East Egg the night of the accident, and perhaps he had
made a story about it all his own. I didn't want to hear it and I avoided
him when I got off the train. I spent my Saturday nights in New York because
those gleaming, dazzling parties of his were with me so vividly that I could
still hear the music and the laughter, faint and incessant, from his garden,
and the cars going up and down his drive. One night I did hear a material
car there, and saw its lights stop at his front steps. But I didn't
investigate. Probably it was some final guest who had been away at the ends
of the earth and didn't know that the party was over. On the last night,
with my trunk packed and my car sold to the grocer, I went over and looked
at that huge incoherent failure of a house once more. On the white steps an
obscene word, scrawled by some boy with a piece of brick, stood out clearly
in the moonlight, and I erased it, drawing my shoe raspingly along the
stone. Then I wandered down to the beach and sprawled out on the sand. Most
of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights
except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the
moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I
became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors'
eyes--a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees
that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the
last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man
must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into
an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face
for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for
wonder. And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of
Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of
Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must
have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know
that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond
the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year
recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--to-morrow we
will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine
morning---- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly
into the past.