Chapter 3

Previous Story:上一章中，Nick到Daisy和Tom的家里拜访，见识了他们家中芳香庞大的花园，装修豪华的别墅。在屋内，Nick见到了重逢时情绪激动且仍旧充满魅力的表妹Daisy以及她的朋友贝克小姐。那么他们见面后究竟会聊些什么呢？

At any rate Miss Baker's lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly and then quickly tipped her head (仰头) back again

—the object she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright.

Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.

I looked back at my cousin who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice.

It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.

Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth—but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget:

a singing compulsion, a whispered "Listen," a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.

I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way east and how a dozen people had sent their love through me.

"Do they miss me?" she cried ecstatically.

"The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath and there's a persistent wail all night along the North Shore."

"How gorgeous! Let's go back, Tom. Tomorrow!" Then she added irrelevantly, "You ought to see the baby."

"I'd like to."

"She's asleep. She's three years old. Haven't you ever seen her?"

"Never."

"Well, you ought to see her. She's——"

Tom Buchanan who had been hovering restlessly about the room stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder.

"What you doing, Nick?"

"I'm a bond man."

"Who with?"

I told him.

"Never heard of them," he remarked decisively.

This annoyed me.

"You will," I answered shortly. "You will if you stay in the East."

"Oh, I'll stay in the East, don't you worry," he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. "I'd be a God Damned fool to live anywhere else."

At this point Miss Baker said "Absolutely!" with such suddenness that I started—it was the first word she uttered since I came into the room.

Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.

"I'm stiff," she complained, "I've been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember."

"Don't look at me," Daisy retorted. "I've been trying to get you to New York all afternoon."

"No, thanks," said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry, "I'm absolutely in training."

Her host looked at her incredulously.

"You are!" He took down his drink (喝下他的酒)as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. "How you ever get anything done is beyond me."

I looked at Miss Baker wondering what it was she "got done." I enjoyed looking at her.

She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet.

Her grey sun-strained (被太阳照眯的) eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming discontented face.

It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.

"You live in West Egg," she remarked contemptuously. "I know somebody there."

"I don't know a single——"

"You must know Gatsby."

"Gatsby?" demanded Daisy. "What Gatsby?"

Before I could reply that he was my neighbor, dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker (棋子) to another square.

Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips the two young women preceded us out onto a rosy-colored porch open toward the sunset where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.

"Why candles?" objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out (熄灭)with her fingers.

"In two weeks it'll be the longest day in the year." She looked at us all radiantly.

"Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it."

"We ought to plan something," yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.

"All right," said Daisy. "What'll we plan?"

She turned to me helplessly. "What do people plan?"

Before I could answer her eyes fastened with (盯着)an awed expression on her little finger.

"Look!" she complained. "I hurt it."

We all looked—the knuckle was black and blue.

"You did it, Tom," she said accusingly. "I know you didn't mean to but you did do it. That's what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great big hulking physical specimen of a?"

"I hate that word hulking," objected Tom crossly (生气地), "even in kidding."

"Hulking," insisted Daisy.

Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of (没有)all desire .

They were here—and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained.

They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too would be over and casually put away (打发时间).

It was sharply different from the West where an evening was hurried from phase to phase toward its close in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of (害怕)the moment itself.

"You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy," I confessed on my second glass of corky (软木塞气味的) but rather impressive claret. "Can't you talk about crops or something?"

I meant nothing in particular by this remark but it was taken up in an unexpected way.

"Civilization's going to pieces (崩溃)," broke out Tom violently.

"I've gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read 'The Rise of the Coloured Empires' (《有色帝国的兴起》)by this man Goddard?"

"Why, no," I answered, rather surprised by his tone.

"Well, it's a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved."

"Tom's getting very profound," said Daisy with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. "He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we——"

"Well, these books are all scientific," insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently.

"This fellow has worked out (解释清楚) the whole thing. It's up to us who are the dominant race to watch out or these other races will have control of things."

"We've got to beat them down," whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.

"You ought to live in California—" began Miss Baker but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.

"This idea is that we're Nordics. I am, and you are and you are and——" After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod and she winked at me again.

"—and we've produced all the things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art and all that. Do you see?"

There was something pathetic in his concentration as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more.

When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned toward me.

（1286 words）

今日词组

1. tip one’s head仰头

2. be alert for提防...，对...警觉

3. take down his drink喝下他的酒

4. sun-strained eyes被太阳照咪的眼睛

5. compel from从...推出去

6. snap out熄灭

7. fasten with盯着，盯住

8. in the absence of没有...

9. put away打发时间

10. in dread of害怕...

11. go to pieces崩溃，瓦解

12. work out理解透彻，解释清楚

13. seize upon抓住/利用（某个机会）

备注：本专辑为知米阅读提升营配套音频，方便学员循环收听。

对英文原著学习的小伙伴可以关注我们的微信公众号【知米阅读】，加入我们的学习军团，和上万名小伙伴一起阅读英文原著。100天读3-4本英文原著，思想和英语同时进步！