Chapter five of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. When I came
home to West Egg that night, I was afraid for a moment that my
house was on fire. Two o'clock and the whole corner of the peninsula was
blazing with light which fell unreal on the shrubbery and made thin, elongating glints
upon the roadside wires. Turning a corner, I saw that it was Gatsby's
house, lit from tower to cellar. At first I thought it was another
party, a wild route that had resolved itself into hide and go seek or
sardines in the box, with all the house thrown open to the game.
But there wasn't a sound, only wind in the trees, which blew the
wires and made the lights go off and on again, as if the house
had winked into the darkness. As my taxi groaned away, I saw Gatsby
walking toward me across his lawn. Your place looks like the World's fair,
I said, does it. He turned his eyes toward it absently. I've
been glancing into some of the rooms. Let's go to Coney Island, Old
Sport in my car. It's too late. We'll suppose we take a plunge
in the swimming pool. I haven't made use of it all summer. I've
got to go to bed, all right, he waited, looking at me
with suppressed eagerness. I talked with miss Baker, I said, after a
moment, I'm going to call up Daisy tomorrow and bite her over here to
tea. Oh that's all right, he said, carelessly. I don't want
to put you to any trouble. What day would suit you? What day
would suit you? He corrected me quickly. I don't want to put you
to any trouble. You see, how about the day after tomorrow? He
considered for a moment, then with reluctance, I want to get the grass
cut, he said. We both looked down at the grass. There was
a sharp line where my ragged lawn ended and the darker, well kept expanse
of his began. I suspected that he meant my grass. There's another little
thing, he said, uncertainly and hesitated. Would you rather put it off
for a few days? I asked, Oh, it isn't about that at
least. He fumbled with a series of beginnings. Why, I thought,
Why look here, old Sport, you don't make much money? Do you
not very much? This seemed to reassure him, and he continued more confidently.
But I thought you didn't. If you'll pardon my You see, I
carry on a little business on the side, a sort of sideline, you
understand. I thought that if you don't make very much, you're selling bonds,
aren't you? Old sport? Trying to well? This would interest you.
It wouldn't take up much of your time, and you might pick up
a nice bit of money. It happens to be a rather confidential sort of
thing. I realized now that under different circumstances, that conversation might have been
one of the crises of my life. But because the offer was obviously and
tactlessly for a service to be rendered, I had no choice except to cut
him off. There. I've got my hands full, I said, I'm
much obliged, but I couldn't take on any more work. You wouldn't have
to do any business with wolfsheim. Evidently he thought that I was shying away
from the connection mentioned at lunch, but I assured him he was wrong.
He waited a moment longer, hoping I had begin a conversation, but I
was too absorbed to be responsive, so he went unwillingly home. The evening
had made me light headed and happy. I think I walked into a deep
sleep as I entered my front door. So I don't know whether or not
Gatsby went to Coney Island, or for how many hours he glanced into rooms
while his house blazed gaudily on. I called up Daisy from the office next
morning and invited her to come to tea. Don't bring Tom, I warned
her, what don't bring Tom? Who's Tom? She asked innocently. The
day agreed upon was pouring rain. At eleven o'clock, a man in a
raincoat, dragging along on more tapped at my front door and said that mister
Gatsby had sent him over to cut my grass. This reminded me that I
had forgotten to tell my Fin to come back, so I drove into West
Egg Village to search for her among soggy, whitewashed alleys, and to buy
some cups and lemons and flowers. The flowers were unnecessary, for at two
o'clock a greenhouse arrived from Gatsby's with innumerable receptacles to contain it. An hour
later, the front door opened nervously, and Gatsby, in a white flannel
suit, silver shirt, and gold colored tie, hurried in. He was
pale, and there were dark signs of sleeplessness beneath his eyes. Is everything
all right, he asked immediately. The grass looks fine, if that's what
you mean. What grass? He inquired blankly, Oh, the grass in
the yard. He looked out the window at it, but judging from his
expression, I don't believe he saw a thing. Looks very good, he
remarked vaguely. One of the papers said that he thought the rain would stop
about four. I think it was the Journal. Have you got everything you
need? In the shape of tea? I took him into the pantry,
where he looked a little reproachfully at the fin Together we scrutinized the twelve lemmon
cakes from the delicatessen shop. Will they do, I asked, Of course,
of course they're fine, and he added hollowly, old sport. The
rain cooled about half past three to a damp mist, through which occasional fin
drops swam like dew. Gatsby looked with vacant eyes through a copy of Clay's
Economics, starting at the finished tread that shook the kitchen floor, and peering
towards the bleared windows from time to time as if a series of invisible but
alarming happenings were taking place outside. Finally, he got up and informed me
in an uncertain voice that he was going home. Why's that nobody's coming to
tea? It's too late. He looked at his watch, as if there
was some pressing demand on his time elsewhere. I can't wait all day.
Don't be silly, it's just two minutes to four. He sat down miserably,
as if I had pushed him, and simultaneously there was the sound of
a motor turning into my lane. We both jumped up and a little harrowed
myself. I went out into the yard under the dripping, bare lilac trees.
A large open car was coming up the drive. It stopped. Daisy's
face, tipped sideways beneath a three cornered lavender hat, looked out at me
with a bright, ecstatic smile. Is this absolutely where you live, my
dearest one? The exhilarating ripple of her voice was a wild tonic in the
rain. I had to follow the sound of it for a moment, up
and down with my ear alone Before any words came through. A damp streak
of hair lay like a dash of blue paint across her cheek, and her
hand was wet with glistening drops as I took it to help her from the
car. Are you in love with me? She said, low in my
ear? Or why did I have to come alone? That's a secret of
Castle Rack. Rent. Tell your chauffeur to go far away and spend an
hour. Come back in an hour, Ferdy, then, in a grave
murmur, his name is Ferdy. Does the gasoline effect his nose? I
don't think so, she said, innocently. Why we went in? To
my overwhelming surprise, the living room was deserted. Well, that's funny,
I exclaimed, what's funny? She turned her head. As there was a
light, dignified knocking at the front door. I went out and opened it.
Gatsby, pale as death, with his hands plunged like weights in his
coat pockets, was standing in a puddle of water, glaring tragically into my
eyes. With his hand still in his coat pockets. He stalked by me
into the hall, turned sharply as if he were on a wire, and
disappeared into the living room. It wasn't a bit funny. Aware of the
loud beating of my own heart, I pulled the door too against the increasing
rain. For half a minute there wasn't a sound. Then from the living
room I heard a sort of choking murmur and part of a laugh, followed
by Daisy's voice on a clear artificial note. I certainly am awfully glad to
see you again. A pause. It endured horribly. I had nothing to
do in the hall, so I went into the room. Gatsby, his
hand still in his pockets, was reclined against the mantelpiece in a strained counterfeit
of perfect ease, even of boredom. His head leaned back so far that
it rested against the face of a defunct mantelpiece clock, and from this position,
his distraught eyes stared down at Daisy, who was sitting frightened but graceful
on the edge of a stiff chair. We've met before, muttered Gatsby.
His eyes glanced momentarily at me, and his lips parted with an abortive attempt
at a laugh. Luckily, the clock took this moment to tilt dangerously at
the pressure of his head, whereupon he turned and caught it with trembling fingers
and set it back in place. Then he sat down rigidly, his elbows
on the arm of the sofa and his chin in his hand. I'm sorry
about the clock, he said, My own face had now assumed a deep
tropical burn. I couldn't muster up a single commonplace out of the thousand in
my head. It's an old clock, I told him, idiotically. I
think we all believed for a moment that it had smashed in pieces on the
floor. Oh, we haven't meant for many years, said Daisy, her
voice as matter of fact as it could ever be. Five years next November.
The automatic quality of Gatsby's answer set us all back at least another minute.
I had them both on their feet with a desperate suggestion that they helped
me make tea in the kitchen. When the demoniac Finn brought it in on
a tray. Amid the welcome confusion of cups and cakes, a certain physical
decency established itself. Gatsby got himself into a shadow, and while Daisy and
I talked conscientiously from one to the other, of us with tense, unhappy
eyes. However, as calmness wasn't an end in itself. I made an
excuse at the first possible moment and got to my feet. Where are you
going, demanded Gatsby an immediate alarm. I'll be back. I've got to
speak to you about something before you go. He followed me wildly into the
kitchen, closed the door, and whispered, oh God, in a miserable
way. What's the matter. This is a terrible mistake, he said,
shaking his head from side to side, A terrible, terrible mistake. You're
just embarrassed, that's all. And luckily, I added, Daisy's embarrassed too.
She's embarrassed, he repeated, incredulously, just as much as you are.
Don't talk so loud. You're acting like a little boy, I broke
out impatiently. Not only that, but you're rude. Daisy's sitting in there
all alone. He raised his hand to stop my words, looked at me
with unforgettable reproach, and, opening the door, cautiously, went back into
the other room. I walked out the back way, just as Gatsby had
when he had made his nervous circuit of the house half an hour before,
and ran for a huge black knotted tree, whose massed leaves made a fabric
against the rain. Once more, it was pouring, and my irregular lawn,
well shaved by a Gatsby's gardener, abounded in small muddy swamps and prehistoric
marshes. There was nothing to look at from under the tree except Gatsby's enormous
house. So I stared at it like Kant at his church steeple, for
half an hour. A brewer had built it early in the period craze,
a decade before, and there was a story that he'd agreed to pay five
years taxes on all the neighboring cottages if the owners would have their roofs thatched
with straw. Perhaps their refusal took the heart out of his plan to found
a family, so he went into an immediate decline. His children sold his
house, with the black wreath still on the door. Americans, while willing,
even eager to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.
After half an hour, the sun shone again, and the grocer's automobile rounded
Gatsby's drive with the raw material for his servants dinner. I felt sure he
wouldn't eat a spoonful a maid began opening the upper windows of his house,
appeared momentarily in each, and leaning from the large central bay, spat meditatively
into the garden. It was time I went back, while the rain continued.
It had seemed like the murmur of their voices, rising and swelling a
little now and then with gusts of emotion. But in the new silence,
I felt that silence had fallen within the house too. I went in after
making every possible noise in the kitchen, short of pushing over the stove.
But I don't believe they heard a sound. They were sitting at either end
of the couch, looking at each other as if some question had been asked
or was in the air, and every vestige of embarrassment was gone. Daisy's
face was smeared with tears, and when I came in, she jumped up
and began wiping at it with her handkerchief before a mirror. But there was
a change in Gatsby that was simply confounding. He literally glowed, without a
word or a gesture of exultation. A new well being radiated from him and
filled the little room. Oh hello, old Sport, he said, as
if he hadn't seen me for years. I thought for a moment he was
going to shake hands. It stopped raining, has it? When he realized
what I was talking about, that there were twinkle bells of sunshine in the
room, He smiled like a weather man, like an ecstatic patron of recurrent
light, and repeated the news to Daisy. Well, what do you think
of that it stopped raining? I'm glad, Jay, her throat full of
aching, grieving Beauty told only of her unexpected joy. I want you and
Daisy to come over to my house, he said, I'd like to show
her around. You're sure you want me to come? Absolutely old sport.
Daisy went upstairs to wash her face, too late, I thought, with
humiliation of my towels, while Gatsby and I waited on the lawn. My
house looks well, doesn't it? He demanded. See how the whole front
of it catches the light. I agreed that it was splendid. Yes.
His eyes went over at every arch door and square tower. It took me
just three years to earn the money that bought it. I thought you inherited
your money. I did, old Sport, he said, automatically, But
I lost most of it in the big panic, the panic of the war.
I think he hardly knew what he was saying. For when I asked
him what business he was in, he answered, that's my affair, before
he realized that it wasn't an appropriate reply. Oh, I've been in several
things, he corrected himself. I was in the drug business, and that
I was in the oil business. But I'm not in either one. Now,
he looked at me with more attention. Do you mean you've been thinking
over what I proposed the other night? Before I could answer, Daisy came
out of the house and two rows of brass buttons on her dress gleamed in
the sunlight. That huge place there, she cried, pointing, do you
like it? I love it, but I don't see how you've lived there
all alone. I keep it always full of interesting people day and night,
people who do interesting things, celebrated people. Instead of taking the short cut
along the sound, we went down to the road and entered by the big
postern with enchanting murmurs. Daisy admired this aspect, or that of the feudal
silhouette against the sky. Admired the gardens, the sparkling odor of the juncules,
and the frothy odor of hawthorne and plum blossoms, and the pale gold
odor of kiss me at the gate. It was strange to reach the marble
steps and find no stir of bright dresses in and out the door, and
hear no sound but bird voices in the trees and inside. As we wandered
through Marie antoinette, music rooms and restoration salons, I felt that there were
guests concealed behind every couch and table, under orders to be breathlessly silent until
we had passed through. As Gatsby closed the door of the Merton College Library,
I could have sworn I heard the allied man break into ghostly laughter.
We went upstairs, through period bedrooms swathed in rose and lavender silk and vivid
with new flowers, through dressing rooms and poolrooms, and bathrooms with sunken baths
intruding into one chamber where a disheveled man in pajamas was doing liver exercises on
the floor. It was mister Kilpspringer, the boarder. I had seen him
wandering hungrily about the beach that morning. Finally we came into Gatsby his own
apartment, a bedroom and a bath and an atom's study, where we sat
down and drank a glass of some chartreuse he took from a cupboard in the
wall. He hadn't once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he revalued
everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well
loved eyes. Sometimes, too, he stared around at his possessions in a
dazed way, as though in her actual and astounding presence none of it was
any longer real. Once he nearly toppled down a flight of stairs, his
bedroom was the simplest room of all, except where the dresser was garnished with
a toilet set out of pure dull gold. Daisy took the brush with delight
and smoothed her hair, whereupon Gatsby sat down and shaded his eyes and began
to laugh. It's the funniest thing old sport, he said, hilariously.
I can't when I try to. He had passed visibly through two states,
and was entering upon a third. After his embarrassment and unreasoning joy, he
was consumed with wonder at her presence. He had been full of the idea,
so long dreamed it right through to the end, weighted with his teeth
set so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now in the
reaction he was running down like an overwhelmed clock. Recovering himself in a minute.
He opened for us two hulking patent cabinets which held his massed suits and
dressing gowns and ties, and his shirts, piled like bricks and stacks a
dozen high. I've got a man in England who buys me clothes. He
sends over a selection of things at the beginning of each season, spring and
fall. He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them one by
one before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel,
which lost their folds as they fell, and covered the table in many colored
disarray. While we admired, he brought more, and the soft, rich
heap mounted higher, shirts with stripes and scrolls, and plaids, and coral
and apple green and lavender and faint orange with monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly,
with a strange sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began
to cry stormily. They're such beautiful shirts. She sobbed, her voice muffled
in the thick folds. It makes me sad, because I've never seen such
beautiful shirts before. After the house, we were to see the grounds in
the swimming pool, and the hydroplane in the midsummer flowers. But outside Gatsby's
window it began to rain again. So we stood in a row looking at
the corrugated surface of the sound. If it wasn't for the mist, we
could see your home across the bay, said Gatsby. You always have a
green light that burns all night at the end of your dock. Daisy put
her arm through his abruptly, but he seemed absorbed in what he had just
said. Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significant of that light
had now vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from
Daisy, it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her. It
had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again
a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by
one. I began to walk about the room, examining various indefinite objects in
the half darkness. A large photograph of an elderly man in yachting costume attracted
me hung on the wall over his desk. Who's this That that's mister Dan
Cody old Sport. The name sounded faintly familiar. He's dead now. He
used to be my best friend years ago. There was a small picture of
Gatsby, also in yachting costume, on the bureau, Gatsby with his head
thrown back, defiantly, taken apparently when he was about eighteen. I adore
it, exclaimed Daisy, the pampa door. You never told me you had
a pompadour or a yacht. Look at this, said Gatsby quickly. Here's
a lot of clippings about you. They stood side by side, examining it.
I was going to ask to see the rubies when the phone rang and
Gatsby took up the receiver. Yes, well, I can't talk now.
I can't talk now, old Sport, I said, a small town.
He must know what a small town is. Well, he's no use to
us if Detroit is his idea of a small town. He rang off.
Come here, quick, cried Daisy at the window. The rain was still
falling, but the darkness had parted in the west, and there was a
pink and golden billow of foamy clouds above the sea. Look at that,
she whispered, And then after a moment, I'd like to just get one
of those pink clouds and put you in it and push you around. I
tried to go then, but they wouldn't hear of it. Perhaps my presence
made them feel more satisfactorily alone. I know what we'll do, said Gatsby.
We'll have Kilpspringer play the piano. He went out of the room,
calling youing, and returned in a few minutes, accompanied by an embarrassed,
slightly worn young man with shell rimmed glasses and scanty blonde hair. He was
now decently clothed in a sports shirt open at the neck, sneakers, and
duck trousers of a nebulous hue. Did we interrupt your exercise, inquired Daisy
politely. I was asleep, cried mister Kilpspringer, in a spasm of embarrassment.
That is, I'd been asleep. Then I got up. Kilpspringer plays
the piano, said Gatsby, cutting him off. Don't you you in old
sport? I don't play well. I don't hardly play at all. I'm
all out of crack. We'll go downstairs, interrupted Gatsby. He flipped a
switch. The gray windows disappeared as the house glowed full of light. In
the music room, Gatsby turned on a solitary lamp beside the piano. He
lit Daisy cigarette from a trembling match, and sat down with her on a
couch far across the room, where there was no light save what the gleaming
floor bounced in from the hall. When Kilpspringer had played The Love Nest,
he turned round on the bench and searched unhappily for Gatsby in the gloom.
I'm all out of practice, you see, I told you I couldn't play.
I'm all out of prack. Don't talk so much, Old Sport,
commanded Gatsby. Play in the mornin in the evenin, ain't we got faun?
Outside? The wind was loud, and there was a faint glowing of
thunder along the sound. All the lights were going on in West egg now
the electric trains men carrying were plunging home through the rain from New York.
It was the hour of a profound human change, and excitement was generating on
the air. One thing sure and nothing sure. The rich get richer,
and the poor get children in the meantime in between time. As I went
over to say goodbye, I saw that the expression of bewilderment had come back
into Gatsby's face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as to
the quality of his present happiness. Almost five years there must have been moments,
even that afternoon, when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams, not through
her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It
had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with
a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking an owl with
every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can
challenge what a man can store up in his ghostly heart. As I watched
him, he adjusted himself a little visibly. His hand took hold of hers,
and as she said something low in his ear, he turned toward her
with a rush of emotion. I think that voice held him most with its
fluctuating, feverish warmth, because it couldn't be over dreamed. That voice was
a deathless song. They had forgotten me. But Daisy glanced up and held
out her hand Gatsby didn't know me now at all. I looked once more
at them, and they looked back at me, remotely possessed by intense life.
Then I went out of the room and down the marble steps into the
rain, leaving them there together. End of Chapter five.