第24天 ! 盖茨比和黛西的过往

Chapter 8

I couldn't sleep all night; a fog-hornwas groaning incessantly on the Sound, and I tossed half-sick between grotesquereality and savage frightening dreams. Toward dawn I heard a taxi go upGatsby's drive and immediately I jumped out of bed and began to dress--I feltthat I had something to tell him, something to warn him about and morning wouldbe too late.

Crossing his lawn I saw that his frontdoor was still open and he was leaning against a table in the hall, heavy withdejection or sleep.

"Nothing happened," he saidwanly. "I waited, and about four o'clock she came to the window and stoodthere for a minute and then turned out the light."

His house had never seemed so enormous tome as it did that night when we hunted through the great rooms for cigarettes.We pushed aside curtains that were like pavilions and felt over innumerablefeet of dark wall for electric light switches--once I tumbled with a sort of splashupon the keys of a ghostly piano. There was an inexplicable amount of dusteverywhere and the rooms were musty as though they hadn't been aired for manydays. I found the humidor on an unfamiliar table with two stale dry cigarettesinside. Throwing open the French windows of the drawing-room we sat smoking outinto the darkness.

"You ought to go away," I said."It's pretty certain they'll trace your car."

"Go away NOW, old sport?"

"Go to Atlantic City for a week, orup to Montreal."

He wouldn't consider it. He couldn'tpossibly leave Daisy until he knew what she was going to do. He was clutchingat some last hope and I couldn't bear to shake him free.

It was this night that he told me thestrange story of his youth with Dan Cody--told it to me because "JayGatsby" had broken up like glass against Tom's hard malice and the longsecret extravaganza was played out. I think that he would have acknowledgedanything, now, without reserve, but he wanted to talk about Daisy.

She was the first "nice" girlhe had ever known. In various unrevealed capacities he had come in contact withsuch people but always with indiscernible barbed wire between. He found herexcitingly desirable. He went to her house, at first with other officers fromCamp Taylor, then alone. It amazed him--he had never been in such a beautifulhouse before. But what gave it an air of breathless intensity was that Daisylived there--it was as casual a thing to her as his tent out at camp was tohim. There was a ripe mystery about it, a hint of bedrooms upstairs morebeautiful and cool than other bedrooms, of gay and radiant activities takingplace through its corridors and of romances that were not musty and laid awayalready in lavender but fresh and breathing and redolent of this year's shiningmotor cars and of dances whose flowers were scarcely withered. It excited himtoo that many men had already loved Daisy--it increased her value in his eyes.He felt their presence all about the house, pervading the air with the shadesand echoes of still vibrant emotions.

But he knew that he was in Daisy's houseby a colossal accident.

However glorious might be his future asJay Gatsby, he was at present a penniless young man without a past, and at anymoment the invisible cloak of his uniform might slip from his shoulders. So hemade the most of his time. He took what he could get, ravenously andunscrupulously--eventually he took Daisy one still October night, took herbecause he had no real right to touch her hand.

He might have despised himself, for hehad certainly taken her under false pretenses. I don't mean that he had tradedon his phantom millions, but he had deliberately given Daisy a sense ofsecurity; he let her believe that he was a person from much the same stratum asherself--that he was fully able to take care of her. As a matter of fact he hadno such facilities--he had no comfortable family standing behind him and he wasliable at the whim of an impersonal government to be blown anywhere about theworld.

But he didn't despise himself and itdidn't turn out as he had imagined. He had intended, probably, to take what hecould and go--but now he found that he had committed himself to the followingof a grail.

He knew that Daisy was extraordinary but hedidn't realize just how extraordinary a "nice" girl could be. Shevanished into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leavingGatsby--nothing. He felt married to her, that was all.

When they met again two days later it wasGatsby who was breathless, who was somehow betrayed. Her porch was bright withthe bought luxury of star-shine; the wicker of the settee squeaked fashionablyas she turned toward him and he kissed her curious and lovely mouth.

She had caught a cold and it made hervoice huskier and more charming than ever and Gatsby was overwhelmingly awareof the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshnessof many clothes and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above thehot struggles of the poor.

"I can't describe to you howsurprised I was to find out I loved her, old sport. I even hoped for a whilethat she'd throw me over, but she didn't, because she was in love with me too.She 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 allof a sudden I didn't care. What was the use of doing great things if I couldhave a better time telling her what I was going to do?"

On the last afternoon before he wentabroad he sat with Daisy in his arms for a long, silent time. It was a coldfall day with fire in the room and her cheeks flushed. Now and then she movedand he changed his arm a little and once he kissed her dark shining hair. Theafternoon had made them tranquil for a while as if to give them a deep memoryfor the long parting the next day promised. They had never been closer in theirmonth of love nor communicated more profoundly one with another than when shebrushed silent lips against his coat's shoulder or when he touched the end ofher fingers, gently, as though she were asleep.

He did extraordinarily well in the war.He was a captain before he went to the front and following the Argonne battleshe got his majority and the command of the divisional machine guns. After theArmistice he tried frantically to get home but some complication ormisunderstanding sent him to Oxford instead. He was worried now--there was aquality of nervous despair in Daisy's letters. She didn't see why he couldn'tcome. She was feeling the pressure of the world outside and she wanted to seehim and feel his presence beside her and be reassured that she was doing theright thing after all.

For Daisy was young and her artificialworld was redolent of orchids and pleasant, cheerful snobbery and orchestraswhich set the rhythm of the year, summing up the sadness and suggestiveness oflife in new tunes. All night the saxophones wailed the hopeless comment of the"Beale Street Blues" while a hundred pairs of golden and silverslippers shuffled the shining dust. At the grey tea hour there were alwaysrooms that throbbed incessantly with this low sweet fever, while fresh facesdrifted here and there like rose petals blown by the sad horns around thefloor.

Through this twilight universe Daisybegan to move again with the season; suddenly she was again keeping half adozen dates a day with half a dozen men and drowsing asleep at dawn with thebeads and chiffon of an evening dress tangled among dying orchids on the floorbeside her bed. And all the time something within her was crying for adecision. She wanted her life shaped now, immediately--and the decision must bemade by some force--of love, of money, of unquestionable practicality--that wasclose at hand.

That force took shape in the middle of springwith the arrival of Tom Buchanan. There was a wholesome bulkiness about hisperson and his position and Daisy was flattered. Doubtless there was a certainstruggle and a certain relief. The letter reached Gatsby while he was still atOxford.