VIII

1I couldn’t sleep all night; a foghorn was groaning incessantly on the Sound, and I tossed half-sick between grotesque reality and savage, frightening dreams. 2Toward dawn I heard a taxi go up Gatsby’s drive, and immediately I jumped out of bed and began to dress—I felt that I had something to tell him, something to warn him about, and morning would be too late.

3Crossing his lawn, I saw that his front door was still open and he was leaning against a table in the hall, heavy with dejection or sleep.

4“Nothing happened,” he said wanly. 5“I waited, and about four o’clock she came to the window and stood there for a minute and then turned out the light.”

6His house had never seemed so enormous to me as it did that night when we hunted through the great rooms for cigarettes. 7We pushed aside curtains that were like pavilions, and felt over innumerable feet of dark wall for electric light switches—once I tumbled with a sort of splash upon the keys of a ghostly piano. 8There was an inexplicable amount of dust everywhere, and the rooms were musty, as though they hadn’t been aired for many days. 9I found the humidor on an unfamiliar table, with two stale, dry cigarettes inside. 10Throwing open the French windows of the drawing-room, we sat smoking out into the darkness.

11“You ought to go away,” I said. 12“It’s pretty certain they’ll trace your car.”

13“Go away now, old sport?”

14“Go to Atlantic City for a week, or up to Montreal.”

15He wouldn’t consider it. 16He couldn’t possibly leave Daisy until he knew what she was going to do. 17He was clutching at some last hope and I couldn’t bear to shake him free.

18It was this night that he told me the strange story of his youth with Dan Cody—told it to me because “Jay Gatsby” had broken up like glass against Tom’s hard malice, and the long secret extravaganza was played out. 19I think that he would have acknowledged anything now, without reserve, but he wanted to talk about Daisy.

20She was the first “nice” girl he had ever known. 21In various unrevealed capacities he had come in contact with such people, but always with indiscernible barbed wire between. 22He found her excitingly desirable. 23He went to her house, at first with other officers from Camp Taylor, then alone. 24It amazed him—he had never been in such a beautiful house before. 25But what gave it an air of breathless intensity, was that Daisy lived there—it was as casual a thing to her as his tent out at camp was to him. 26There was a ripe mystery about it, a hint of bedrooms upstairs more beautiful and cool than other bedrooms, of gay and radiant activities taking place through its corridors, and of romances that were not musty and laid away already in lavender but fresh and breathing and redolent of this year’s shining motorcars and of dances whose flowers were scarcely withered. 27It excited him, too, that many men had already loved Daisy—it increased her value in his eyes. 28He felt their presence all about the house, pervading the air with the shades and echoes of still vibrant emotions.

29But he knew that he was in Daisy’s house by a colossal accident. 30However glorious might be his future as Jay Gatsby, he was at present a penniless young man without a past, and at any moment the invisible cloak of his uniform might slip from his shoulders. 31So he made the most of his time. 32He took what he could get, ravenously and unscrupulously—eventually he took Daisy one still October night, took her because he had no real right to touch her hand.

33He might have despised himself, for he had certainly taken her under false pretences. 34I don’t mean that he had traded on his phantom millions, but he had deliberately given Daisy a sense of security; he let her believe that he was a person from much the same strata as herself—that he was fully able to take care of her. 35As a matter of fact, he had no such facilities—he had no comfortable family standing behind him, and he was liable at the whim of an impersonal government to be blown anywhere about the world.

36But he didn’t despise himself and it didn’t turn out as he had imagined. 37He had intended, probably, to take what he could and go—but now he found that he had committed himself to the following of a grail. 38He knew that Daisy was extraordinary, but he didn’t realize just how extraordinary a “nice” girl could be. 39She vanished into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby—nothing. 40He felt married to her, that was all.

41When they met again, two days later, it was Gatsby who was breathless, who was, somehow, betrayed. 42Her porch was bright with the bought luxury of star-shine; the wicker of the settee squeaked fashionably as she turned toward him and he kissed her curious and lovely mouth. 43She had caught a cold, and it made her voice huskier and more charming than ever, and Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.

44“I can’t describe to you how surprised I was to find out I loved her, old sport. 45I even hoped for a while that she’d throw me over, but she didn’t, because she was in love with me too. 46She thought I knew a lot because I knew different things from her… Well, there I was, way off my ambitions, getting deeper in love every minute, and all of a sudden I didn’t care. 47What was the use of doing great things if I could have a better time telling her what I was going to do?”

48On the last afternoon before he went abroad, he sat with Daisy in his arms for a long, silent time. 49It was a cold fall day, with fire in the room and her cheeks flushed. 50Now and then she moved and he changed his arm a little, and once he kissed her dark shining hair. 51The afternoon had made them tranquil for a while, as if to give them a deep memory for the long parting the next day promised. 52They had never been closer in their month of love, nor communicated more profoundly one with another, than when she brushed silent lips against his coat’s shoulder or when he touched the end of her fingers, gently, as though she were asleep.

53He did extraordinarily well in the war. 54He was a captain before he went to the front, and following the Argonne battles he got his majority and the command of the divisional machine-guns. 55After the armistice he tried frantically to get home, but some complication or misunderstanding sent him to Oxford instead. 56He was worried now—there was a quality of nervous despair in Daisy’s letters. 57She didn’t see why he couldn’t come. 58She was feeling the pressure of the world outside, and she wanted to see him and feel his presence beside her and be reassured that she was doing the right thing after all.

59For Daisy was young and her artificial world was redolent of orchids and pleasant, cheerful snobbery and orchestras which set the rhythm of the year, summing up the sadness and suggestiveness of life in new tunes. 60All night the saxophones wailed the hopeless comment of the “Beale Street Blues” while a hundred pairs of golden and silver slippers shuffled the shining dust. 61At the grey tea hour there were always rooms that throbbed incessantly with this low, sweet fever, while fresh faces drifted here and there like rose petals blown by the sad horns around the floor.

62Through this twilight universe Daisy began to move again with the season; suddenly she was again keeping half a dozen dates a day with half a dozen men, and drowsing asleep at dawn with the beads and chiffon of an evening-dress tangled among dying orchids on the floor beside her bed. 63And all the time something within her was crying for a decision. 64She wanted her life shaped now, immediately—and the decision must be made by some force—of love, of money, of unquestionable practicality—that was close at hand.

65That force took shape in the middle of spring with the arrival of Tom Buchanan. 66There was a wholesome bulkiness about his person and his position, and Daisy was flattered. 67Doubtless there was a certain struggle and a certain relief. 68The letter reached Gatsby while he was still at Oxford.

69It was dawn now on Long Island and we went about opening the rest of the windows downstairs, filling the house with grey-turning, gold-turning light. 70The shadow of a tree fell abruptly across the dew and ghostly birds began to sing among the blue leaves. 71There was a slow, pleasant movement in the air, scarcely a wind, promising a cool, lovely day.

72“I don’t think she ever loved him.” 73Gatsby turned around from a window and looked at me challengingly. 74“You must remember, old sport, she was very excited this afternoon. 75He told her those things in a way that frightened her—that made it look as if I was some kind of cheap sharper. 76And the result was she hardly knew what she was saying.”

77He sat down gloomily.

78“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?”

79Suddenly he came out with a curious remark.

80“In any case,” he said, “it was just personal.”

81What could you make of that, except to suspect some intensity in his conception of the affair that couldn’t be measured?

82He 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. 83He 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. 84Just 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.

85He left feeling that if he had searched harder, he might have found her—that he was leaving her behind. 86The day-coach—he was penniless now—was hot. 87He 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. 88Then 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.

89The 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. 90He 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. 91But 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.

92It was nine o’clock when we finished breakfast and went out on the porch. 93The night had made a sharp difference in the weather and there was an autumn flavour in the air. 94The gardener, the last one of Gatsby’s former servants, came to the foot of the steps.

95“I’m going to drain the pool today, Mr. Gatsby. 96Leaves’ll start falling pretty soon, and then there’s always trouble with the pipes.”

97“Don’t do it today,” Gatsby answered. 98He turned to me apologetically. 99“You know, old sport, I’ve never used that pool all summer?”

100I looked at my watch and stood up.

101“Twelve minutes to my train.”

102I didn’t want to go to the city. 103I wasn’t worth a decent stroke of work, but it was more than that—I didn’t want to leave Gatsby. 104I missed that train, and then another, before I could get myself away.

105“I’ll call you up,” I said finally.

106“Do, old sport.”

107“I’ll call you about noon.”

108We walked slowly down the steps.

109“I suppose Daisy’ll call too.” 110He looked at me anxiously, as if he hoped I’d corroborate this.

111“I suppose so.”

112“Well, goodbye.”

113We shook hands and I started away. 114Just before I reached the hedge I remembered something and turned around.

115“They’re a rotten crowd,” I shouted across the lawn. 116“You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.”

117I’ve always been glad I said that. 118It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end. 119First 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. 120His gorgeous pink rag of a suit made a bright spot of colour against the white steps, and I thought of the night when I first came to his ancestral home, three months before. 121The 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 goodbye.

122I thanked him for his hospitality. 123We were always thanking him for that—I and the others.

124“Goodbye,” I called. 125“I enjoyed breakfast, Gatsby.”

126Up 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. 127Just before noon the phone woke me, and I started up with sweat breaking out on my forehead. 128It 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. 129Usually 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.

130“I’ve left Daisy’s house,” she said. 131“I’m at Hempstead, and I’m going down to Southampton this afternoon.”

132Probably it had been tactful to leave Daisy’s house, but the act annoyed me, and her next remark made me rigid.

133“You weren’t so nice to me last night.”

134“How could it have mattered then?”

135Silence for a moment. 136Then:

137“However—I want to see you.”

138“I want to see you, too.”

139“Suppose I don’t go to Southampton, and come into town this afternoon?”

140“No—I don’t think this afternoon.”

141“Very well.”

142“It’s impossible this afternoon. 143Various—”

144We talked like that for a while, and then abruptly we weren’t talking any longer. 145I don’t know which of us hung up with a sharp click, but I know I didn’t care. 146I couldn’t have talked to her across a tea-table that day if I never talked to her again in this world.

147I called Gatsby’s house a few minutes later, but the line was busy. 148I tried four times; finally an exasperated central told me the wire was being kept open for long distance from Detroit. 149Taking out my timetable, I drew a small circle around the three-fifty train. 150Then I leaned back in my chair and tried to think. 151It was just noon.

152When I passed the ash-heaps on the train that morning I had crossed deliberately to the other side of the car. 153I supposed 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. 154Now I want to go back a little and tell what happened at the garage after we left there the night before.

155They had difficulty in locating the sister, Catherine. 156She 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. 157When they convinced her of this, she immediately fainted, as if that was the intolerable part of the affair. 158Someone, kind or curious, took her in his car and drove her in the wake of her sister’s body.

159Until 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. 160For a while the door of the office was open, and everyone who came into the garage glanced irresistibly through it. 161Finally someone said it was a shame, and closed the door. 162Michaelis and several other men were with him; first, four or five men, later two or three men. 163Still 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. 164After that, he stayed there alone with Wilson until dawn.

165About three o’clock the quality of Wilson’s incoherent muttering changed—he grew quieter and began to talk about the yellow car. 166He 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.

167But when he heard himself say this, he flinched and began to cry “Oh, my God!” 168again in his groaning voice. 169Michaelis made a clumsy attempt to distract him.

170“How long have you been married, George? 171Come on there, try and sit still a minute, and answer my question. 172How long have you been married?”

173“Twelve years.”

174“Ever had any children? 175Come on, George, sit still—I asked you a question. 176Did you ever have any children?”

177The 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. 178He 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.

179“Have you got a church you go to sometimes, George? 180Maybe even if you haven’t been there for a long time? 181Maybe I could call up the church and get a priest to come over and he could talk to you, see?”

182“Don’t belong to any.”

183“You ought to have a church, George, for times like this. 184You must have gone to church once. 185Didn’t you get married in a church? 186Listen, George, listen to me. 187Didn’t you get married in a church?”

188“That was a long time ago.”

189The effort of answering broke the rhythm of his rocking—for a moment he was silent. 190Then the same half-knowing, half-bewildered look came back into his faded eyes.

191“Look in the drawer there,” he said, pointing at the desk.

192“Which drawer?”

193“That drawer—that one.”

194Michaelis opened the drawer nearest his hand. 195There was nothing in it but a small, expensive dog-leash, made of leather and braided silver. 196It was apparently new.

197“This?” he inquired, holding it up.

198Wilson stared and nodded.

199“I found it yesterday afternoon. 200She tried to tell me about it, but I knew it was something funny.”

201“You mean your wife bought it?”

202“She had it wrapped in tissue paper on her bureau.”

203Michaelis didn’t see anything odd in that, and he gave Wilson a dozen reasons why his wife might have bought the dog-leash. 204But conceivably Wilson had heard some of these same explanations before, from Myrtle, because he began saying “Oh, my God!” 205again in a whisper—his comforter left several explanations in the air.

206“Then he killed her,” said Wilson. 207His mouth dropped open suddenly.

208“Who did?”

209“I have a way of finding out.”

210“You’re morbid, George,” said his friend. 211“This has been a strain to you and you don’t know what you’re saying. 212You’d better try and sit quiet till morning.”

213“He murdered her.”

214“It was an accident, George.”

215Wilson shook his head. 216His eyes narrowed and his mouth widened slightly with the ghost of a superior “Hm!”

217“I know,” he said definitely. 218“I’m one of these trusting fellas 219and I don’t think any harm to nobody, but when I get to know a thing I know it. 220It was the man in that car. 221She ran out to speak to him and he wouldn’t stop.”

222Michaelis had seen this too, but it hadn’t occurred to him that there was any special significance in it. 223He believed that Mrs. Wilson had been running away from her husband, rather than trying to stop any particular car.

224“How could she of been like that?”

225“She’s a deep one,” said Wilson, as if that answered the question. 226“Ah-h-h—”

227He began to rock again, and Michaelis stood twisting the leash in his hand.

228“Maybe you got some friend that I could telephone for, George?”

229This was a forlorn hope—he was almost sure that Wilson had no friend: there was not enough of him for his wife. 230He 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. 231About five o’clock it was blue enough outside to snap off the light.

232Wilson’s glazed eyes turned out to the ash-heaps, where small grey clouds took on fantastic shapes and scurried here and there in the faint dawn wind.

233“I spoke to her,” he muttered, after a long silence. 234“I told her she might fool me 235but she couldn’t fool God. 236I 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 237I said ‘God knows what you’ve been doing, everything you’ve been doing. 238You may fool me, but you can’t fool God!’ ”

239Standing 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.

240“God sees everything,” repeated Wilson.

241“That’s an advertisement,” Michaelis assured him. 242Something made him turn away from the window and look back into the room. 243But Wilson stood there a long time, his face close to the window pane, nodding into the twilight.

244By six o’clock Michaelis was worn out, and grateful for the sound of a car stopping outside. 245It 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. 246Wilson was quieter now, and Michaelis went home to sleep; when he awoke four hours later and hurried back to the garage, Wilson was gone.

247His 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. 248He must have been tired and walking slowly, for he didn’t reach Gad’s Hill until noon. 249Thus 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. 250Then for three hours he disappeared from view. 251The 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. 252On 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. 253By half-past two he was in West Egg, where he asked someone the way to Gatsby’s house. 254So by that time he knew Gatsby’s name.

255At two o’clock Gatsby put on his bathing-suit and left word with the butler that if anyone phoned word was to be brought to him at the pool. 256He stopped at the garage for a pneumatic mattress that had amused his guests during the summer, and the chauffeur helped him to pump it up. 257Then 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.

258Gatsby shouldered the mattress and started for the pool. 259Once 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.

260No telephone message arrived, but the butler went without his sleep and waited for it until four o’clock—until long after there was anyone to give it to if it came. 261I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn’t believe it would come, and perhaps he no longer cared. 262If 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. 263He 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. 264A 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.

265The chauffeur—he was one of Wolfshiem’s protégés—heard the shots—afterwards he could only say that he hadn’t thought anything much about them. 266I drove from the station directly to Gatsby’s house and my rushing anxiously up the front steps was the first thing that alarmed anyone. 267But they knew then, I firmly believe. 268With scarcely a word said, four of us, the chauffeur, butler, gardener, and I hurried down to the pool.

269There 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. 270With little ripples that were hardly the shadows of waves, the laden mattress moved irregularly down the pool. 271A small gust of wind that scarcely corrugated the surface was enough to disturb its accidental course with its accidental burden. 272The touch of a cluster of leaves revolved it slowly, tracing, like the leg of transit, a thin red circle in the water.

273It 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.