第10天 ! 盖茨比的经历

Chapter4

OnSunday morning while church bells rang in the villages along shore the worldand its mistress returned to Gatsby's house and twinkled hilariously on hislawn.

"He'sa bootlegger," said the young ladies, moving somewhere between hiscocktails and his flowers. "One time he killed a man who had found outthat he was nephew to von Hindenburg and second cousin to the devil.

Reachme a rose, honey, and pour me a last drop into that there crystal glass."

OnceI wrote down on the empty spaces of a time-table the names of those who came toGatsby's house that summer. It is an old time-table now, disintegrating at itsfolds and headed "This schedule in effect July 5th, 1922." But I canstill read the grey names and they will give you a better impression than mygeneralities of those who accepted Gatsby's hospitality and paid him the subtletribute of knowing nothing whatever about him.

FromEast Egg, then, came the Chester Beckers and the Leeches and a man named Bunsenwhom I knew at Yale and Doctor Webster Civet who was drowned last summer up inMaine. And the Hornbeams and the Willie Voltaires and a whole clan namedBlackbuck who always gathered in a corner and flipped up their noses like goatsat whosoever came near.

Andthe Ismays and the Chrysties (or rather Hubert Auerbach and Mr.

Chrystie'swife) and Edgar Beaver, whose hair they say turned cotton-white one winterafternoon for no good reason at all.

ClarenceEndive was from East Egg, as I remember. He came only once, in whiteknickerbockers, and had a fight with a bum named Etty in the garden. Fromfarther out on the Island came the Cheadles and the O. R. P. Schraeders and theStonewall Jackson Abrams of Georgia and the Fishguards and the Ripley Snells.Snell was there three days before he went to the penitentiary, so drunk out onthe gravel drive that Mrs. Ulysses Swett's automobile ran over his right hand.The Dancies came too and S. B. Whitebait, who was well over sixty, and MauriceA. Flink and the Hammerheads and Beluga the tobacco importer and Beluga'sgirls.

FromWest Egg came the Poles and the Mulreadys and Cecil Roebuck and Cecil Schoenand Gulick the state senator and Newton Orchid who controlled Films ParExcellence and Eckhaust and Clyde Cohen and Don S. Schwartze (the son) andArthur McCarty, all connected with the movies in one way or another. And theCatlips and the Bembergs and G.

EarlMuldoon, brother to that Muldoon who afterward strangled his wife.

DaFontano the promoter came there, and Ed Legros and James B.

("Rot-Gut")Ferret and the De Jongs and Ernest Lilly--they came to gamble and when Ferretwandered into the garden it meant he was cleaned out and Associated Tractionwould have to fluctuate profitably next day.

A mannamed Klipspringer was there so often and so long that he became known as"the boarder"--I doubt if he had any other home. Of theatrical peoplethere were Gus Waize and Horace O'Donavan and Lester Meyer and George Duckweedand Francis Bull. Also from New York were the Chromes and the Backhyssons andthe Dennickers and Russel Betty and the Corrigans and the Kellehers and the Dewarsand the Scullys and S. W.

Belcherand the Smirkes and the young Quinns, divorced now, and Henry L. Palmetto whokilled himself by jumping in front of a subway train in Times Square.

BennyMcClenahan arrived always with four girls. They were never quite the same onesin physical person but they were so identical one with another that itinevitably seemed they had been there before. I have forgotten theirnames--Jaqueline, I think, or else Consuela or Gloria or Judy or June, andtheir last names were either the melodious names of flowers and months or thesterner ones of the great American capitalists whose cousins, if pressed, theywould confess themselves to be.

Inaddition to all these I can remember that Faustina O'Brien came there at leastonce and the Baedeker girls and young Brewer who had his nose shot off in thewar and Mr. Albrucksburger and Miss Haag, his fiancée, and Ardita Fitz-Peters,and Mr. P. Jewett, once head of the American Legion, and Miss Claudia Hip witha man reputed to be her chauffeur, and a prince of something whom we calledDuke and whose name, if I ever knew it, I have forgotten.

Allthese people came to Gatsby's house in the summer.

Atnine o'clock, one morning late in July Gatsby's gorgeous car lurched up therocky drive to my door and gave out a burst of melody from its three notedhorn. It was the first time he had called on me though I had gone to two of hisparties, mounted in his hydroplane, and, at his urgent invitation, madefrequent use of his beach.

"Goodmorning, old sport. You're having lunch with me today and I thought we'd rideup together."

Hewas balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that resourcefulness ofmovement that is so peculiarly American--that comes, I suppose, with theabsence of lifting work or rigid sitting in youth and, even more, with theformless grace of our nervous, sporadic games.

Thisquality was continually breaking through his punctilious manner in the shape ofrestlessness. He was never quite still; there was always a tapping footsomewhere or the impatient opening and closing of a hand.

Hesaw me looking with admiration at his car.

"It'spretty, isn't it, old sport." He jumped off to give me a better view."Haven't you ever seen it before?"

I'dseen it. Everybody had seen it. It was a rich cream color, bright with nickel,swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hatboxes andsupper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of windshields thatmirrored a dozen suns. Sitting down behind many layers of glass in a sort ofgreen leather conservatory we started to town.

I hadtalked with him perhaps half a dozen times in the past month and found, to mydisappointment, that he had little to say. So my first impression, that he wasa person of some undefined consequence, had gradually faded and he had becomesimply the proprietor of an elaborate roadhouse next door.

Andthen came that disconcerting ride. We hadn't reached West Egg village beforeGatsby began leaving his elegant sentences unfinished and slapping himselfindecisively on the knee of his caramel-colored suit.

"Lookhere, old sport," he broke out surprisingly. "What's your opinion ofme, anyhow?"

Alittle overwhelmed, I began the generalized evasions which that questiondeserves.

"Well,I'm going to tell you something about my life," he interrupted.

"Idon't want you to get a wrong idea of me from all these stories you hear."

So hewas aware of the bizarre accusations that flavored conversation in his halls.

"I'lltell you God's truth." His right hand suddenly ordered divine retributionto stand by. "I am the son of some wealthy people in the middle-west--alldead now. I was brought up in America but educated at Oxford because all myancestors have been educated there for many years.

It isa family tradition."

Helooked at me sideways--and I knew why Jordan Baker had believed he was lying.He hurried the phrase "educated at Oxford," or swallowed it or chokedon it as though it had bothered him before. And with this doubt his wholestatement fell to pieces and I wondered if there wasn't something a littlesinister about him after all.

"Whatpart of the middle-west?" I inquired casually.

"SanFrancisco."

"Isee."

"Myfamily all died and I came into a good deal of money."

Hisvoice was solemn as if the memory of that sudden extinction of a clan stillhaunted him. For a moment I suspected that he was pulling my leg but a glanceat him convinced me otherwise.

"Afterthat I lived like a young rajah in all the capitals of Europe--Paris, Venice,Rome--collecting jewels, chiefly rubies, hunting big game, painting a little,things for myself only, and trying to forget something very sad that hadhappened to me long ago."

Withan effort I managed to restrain my incredulous laughter. The very phrases wereworn so threadbare that they evoked no image except that of a turbaned"character" leaking sawdust at every pore as he pursued a tigerthrough the Bois de Boulogne.

"Thencame the war, old sport. It was a great relief and I tried very hard to die butI seemed to bear an enchanted life. I accepted a commission as first lieutenantwhen it began. In the Argonne Forest I took two machine-gun detachments so farforward that there was a half mile gap on either side of us where the infantrycouldn't advance. We stayed there two days and two nights, a hundred and thirtymen with sixteen Lewis guns, and when the infantry came up at last they foundthe insignia of three German divisions among the piles of dead. I was promotedto be a major and every Allied government gave me a decoration--evenMontenegro, little Montenegro down on the Adriatic Sea!"

LittleMontenegro! He lifted up the words and nodded at them--with his smile. Thesmile comprehended Montenegro's troubled history and sympathized with the bravestruggles of the Montenegrin people. It appreciated fully the chain of nationalcircumstances which had elicited this tribute from Montenegro's warm littleheart. My incredulity was submerged in fascination now; it was like skimminghastily through a dozen magazines.

Hereached in his pocket and a piece of metal, slung on a ribbon, fell into mypalm.

"That'sthe one from Montenegro."

To myastonishment, the thing had an authentic look.

_Orderidi Danilo_, ran the circular legend, _Montenegro, Nicolas Rex_.

"Turnit."

_MajorJay Gatsby_, I read, _For Valour Extraordinary_.

"Here'sanother thing I always carry. A souvenir of Oxford days. It was taken in TrinityQuad--the man on my left is now the Earl of Dorcaster."

Itwas a photograph of half a dozen young men in blazers loafing in an archwaythrough which were visible a host of spires. There was Gatsby, looking alittle, not much, younger--with a cricket bat in his hand.

Thenit was all true. I saw the skins of tigers flaming in his palace on the GrandCanal; I saw him opening a chest of rubies to ease, with their crimson-lighteddepths, the gnawings of his broken heart.

"I'mgoing to make a big request of you today," he said, pocketing hissouvenirs with satisfaction, "so I thought you ought to know somethingabout me. I didn't want you to think I was just some nobody. You see, I usuallyfind myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget thesad thing that happened to me." He hesitated.

"You'llhear about it this afternoon."

"Atlunch?"

"No,this afternoon. I happened to find out that you're taking Miss Baker totea."

"Doyou mean you're in love with Miss Baker?"

"No,old sport, I'm not. But Miss Baker has kindly consented to speak to you aboutthis matter."