Chapter four of the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. On Sunday morning, while church bells rang in the villages along shore, the World and its Mistress returned to Gatsby's house and twinkled hilariously on his lawn. He's a bootlegger, said the young ladies, moving somewhere between his cocktails and his flowers. One time he killed a man who had found out that he was nephew to von Hindenburgh and second cousin to the devil. Reach me a rose, honey,
and pour me a last drop into that there crystal glass. Once I wrote down on the empty spaces of a timetable the names of those who came to Gatsby's house that summer. It is an old timetable, now disintegrating at its folds, and headed this schedule in effect July fifth, nineteen twenty two. But I can still read the gray names, and they will give you a better impression than my generalities, of those who accepted Gatsby's hospitality and paid
him the subtle tribute of knowing nothing whatever about him. From East Egg then came the Chester Beckers, and the Leeches, and a man named Bunsen, whom I knew at Yale, and a doctor Webster Sivett, who was drowned last summer up in Maine, and the Hornbeams, and the Willie Voltaires, and whole clan named Blackbuck, who always gathered in a corner and flipped up
their noses like goats at whoever came near. And the Ismays and the Christies, or rather Hubert Auerbach and mister Christie's wife, and Edgar Beaver, whose hair they say turned cotton white one winter afternoon for no good reason at all. Clarence endive was from East Egg as I remember. He came only once in white knickerbockers, and had a fight with a bum named Eddie in the garden. From farther out on the island came the Cheatles and the O.
RP. Schraders, and the stonewalled Jackson Abrams of Georgia, and the fish Guards, and the Ripley Snells. Snell was there three days before he went to the penitentiary, so drunk out on the gravel drive that missus Ulysses sweats
automobile ran over his right hand. The Dancys came too, and S. B. Whitebait, who was well over sixty, and Maurice a Flink, and the Hammerheads and Beluga the Tobacco and Porter and Bluga's girls from West Egg came the Poles and the Mulradis, and the Cecil Roebuck and Cecil Shone and Gulik the States Senator and Newton Orchid who controlled films par excellence, and Eckhouston, Clyde Cohen and Don S. Schwartz the Son and Arthur McCarty, all
connected with the movies in one way or another, and the cat Lips and the Bembergs, and g Earl Muldoon, brother of that Muldoon who afterwards strangled his wife. Da Fontano. The Promoter came there and Ed Legros and James b rot Gut Ferret and the Dejongs and Ernest Lilly. They came to gamble, and when Ferrett wandered into the garden and meant he was cleaned out and associated Traction would have to fluctuate profitably next day. A man named Clipspringer was
there so often that he became known as the Border. I doubt if he had any other home. Of theatrical people, there were gus Ways and Horace
O'Donovan and Lester Meyer and George Duckweed and Francis Bull. Also from New York were the Chromes and the Backisons, and the Dennickers and Russell Betty and the Corrigans and the Kellers and the Dwars and the Scullies and s. W. Belcher and the Smirkys, and the young Quinn's divorced now and Henry L. Palmetto, who killed himself by jumping in front of a subway train in Times
Square. Benny mcclenahan arrived always with four girls. They were never quite the same ones in physical person, but they were so identical one with another that it inevitably seemed that they had been there before. I've forgotten their names Jacqueline, I think, or else Consuela or Gloria, or Judy or June.
And their last names were either the melodious names of flowers and months, or the sterner ones of the great American capitalists, whose cousins, if pressed, they would confess themselves to be. In addition to all these, I can remember that Faustina O'Brien came there at least once, and the Bedecker girls, and young Brewer, who had his nose shot off in the war, and mister Allbrooksburger, and Miss Hag his fiancee, and Ardita fitz Peters, and
mister p Jewet, once head of the American Legion, with a man reputed to be her chauffeur, and a prince of something who we called duke, and whose name, if I ever knew it, I have gotten. All these people came to Gatsby's house in the summer. At nine o'clock one morning late in July, Gatsby's gorgeous car lurched up the rocky drive to my door
and gave out a burst of melody from its three noted horn. It was the first time he had called on me, though I had gone to two of his parties mounted in his hydroplane, and at his urgent invitation, made frequent use of his beach. Good morning, old Sport, you were having lunch with me today, and I thought we'd ride up together. He was balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that resourcefulness of movement that is
so peculiarly American. That comes, I suppose, with the absence of lifting work in youth, and even more with the formless grace of our nervous, sporadic games. This quality was continually breaking through his punctilious manner in the shape of restlessness. He was never quite still. There was always a tapping foot somewhere, or the impatient opening closing of a hand. He saw me looking with admiration at his car. It's pretty, isn't it? Old sport?
He jumped off and gave me a better view. Have you ever seen it? Before I'd seen it, everybody had seen it. It was a rich cream color, bright with nickel swollen here and there in its monstrous length, with triumphant hot boxes and supper boxes and tool boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of windshields that mirrored a dozen sons sitting down behind many layers of glass,
and a sort of green leather conservatory. We started to town. I talked with him perhaps half a dozen times in the past month, and found, to my disappointment, that he had little to say. So my first impression that he was a person of some undefined consequence I gradually faded, and
he became simply the proprietor of an elaborate roadhouse next door. And then came that disconcerting ride we hadn't reached West Egg Village before Gatsby began leaving his elegant sentences unfinished and slapping himself indecisively on the knee of his caramel colored suit. Look here, old Sport, he broke out, surprisingly, what's your opinion of me? Anyhow? A little overwhelmed, I began the generalized evasions which that question deserves. Well, I'm going to tell you something about my life,
he interrupted. I don't want you to get a wrong idea of me from all these stories you hear. So he was aware of the bizarre accusations that flavored conversation in his halls. I'll tell you God's truth. His right hand suddenly ordered divine retribution to stand by. I am the son of some wealthy people in the Middle West, all dead now. I was brought up in America, but educated Oxford because all my ancestors have been educated there for
many years. It is a family tradition. And he looked 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 choked on it, as though it had bothered him before, and with this doubt. His whole statement fell to pieces, and I wondered if there was something a little sinister about him. After all? What part of the Middle West? I inquired casually San Francisco. I see my family all died, and I came into a
good deal of money. His voice was solemn, as as if the memory of the sudden extinction of a clan still haunted him. For a moment I suspected that he was pulling my leg, but a glance at him convinced me otherwise. After that, I lived like a young Rajah and 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 had happened to me long ago. With an effort,
I managed to restrain my incredulous laughter. The very phrases were worn so threadbare that they evoked no image except that of a turbaned character leaking sawdust at every poor as he pursued a tiger through the Wada Bologna. Then came the war Old Sport. It was a great relief, and I tried very hard to die but I seemed to bear the enchanted life. I accepted a commission as
first lieutenant. When it began in the Argonne Forest, I took the remains of my machine gun battalion so far forward that there was a half mile gap on either side of us where the infantry couldn't advance. We stayed two days and two nights, a hundred and thirty men with sixteen Lewis guns, and when the infantry came up at last, I found the insignia of three German
divisions among the piles of dead. I was promoted to be a major, and every Allied government gave me a decoration, even Montenegro, Little Montenegro, down on the Adriatic Sea, Little Montenegro. He lifted up the words and nodded at them with his smile. The smile comprehended Montenegro's troubled history and sympathized with the brave struggles of the Montenegron people. It appreciated fully the chain of
national circumstances which had elicited this tribute from Montenegro's warm little heart. My incredulity was submerged in fascination. Now it was like skimming hastily through a dozen magazines. He reached in his pocket and a piece of metal, slung and ribbon fell into my palm. That's the one from Montenegro. To my astonishment, the thing had an authentic look. Ordery de Danilo ran the circular legend Montenegro. Nicholas Rex turn it Major J. Gadsby, I read for valor extraordinary.
Here's another thing. I always carry a souvenir of Oxford days. It was taken at Trinity Quad. The man on my left is now the Earl of Doncaster. It was a photograph of half a dozen young men in blazers, loafing in an archway, through which were visible a host of spires. There was Gadsby, looking a little not much younger, with a cricket bat in his hand. Then it was all true. I saw the skins of
tigers flaming in his palace on the Grand Canal. I saw him opening a chest of rubies to ease with their crimson lighted depths, the gnawings of his broken heart. I'm going to make a big request of you today, he said, pocketing his souvenirs with satisfaction. So I thought you ought to know something about me. I didn't want you to think I was just some nobody. You see, I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and
there trying to forget the sad things that happened to me. He hesitated, You'll hear about it this afternoon at lunch. No, this afternoon, I happened to find out that you're taking miss Baker to tea. Do you mean that you're in love with miss Baker? No, old Sport, I'm not. But Miss Baker had kindly consented to speak to you about this matter. I hadn't the faintest idea what this matter was, but I was more annoyed than interested. I hadn't asked Jordan to tea in order to discuss mister j.
Gadsby. I was sure the request would be something utterly fantastic, and for a moment I was sorry I had ever set foot upon his overpopulated lawn. He wouldn't say another word. His correctness grew on him. As we neared the city. We passed Port Roosevelt, where there was a glimpse of red belted ocean going ships, and sped along a cobb old slum lined with the dark, undeserted saloons of the faded Guilt nineteen hundreds. Then the valley of ashes opened out on both sides of us, and I had a glimpse
of Missus Wilson straining at the garage pump with panting vitality. As we went by, with fenders spreadlike wings, we scattered light through half astoria, only half for As we twisted among the pillars of the elevated I heard the familiar jug jug spat of a motorcycle, and a frantic policeman rode alongside all right, old Sport, called Gatsby. We slowed down, taking a white card from his wallet, we waved it before the man's eyes. Right, you
are agreed, the policeman tipping his cap. Know you next time, mister Gatsby. Excuse me, what was that? I inquired the picture of Oxford. I was able to do the Commissioner of favor once, and he sends me a Christmas card every year. Over the bridge, with the sunlight through the girders making a constant flicker upon the moving cars, with the city rising up across the river in white heaps and sugar lumps, all built with a
wish out of non olfactory money. The city scene from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city scene. For the first time in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world. A dead man passed us in a hearse heaped with blooms, followed by two carriages with drawn blinds, and by more cheerful carriages for friends. The friends looked out at us with the tragic eyes and short upper lips of southeastern Europe, and I was glad
that the sight of Gatsby's splendid car was included in their somber holiday. As we crossed Blackwell's Island, a limousine passed us, driven by a white chauffeur, in which sat three modish negroes, two bucks and a girl. I laughed aloud as the yokes of their eyeballs rolled toward us in haughty rivalry. Anything can happen now that we've slid over this bridge, I thought, anything
at all, even Gatsby, could happen without any particular wonder. Roaring noon, in a well fanned forty second street cellar, I met Gatsby for lunch. Blinking away. The brightness of the street outside my eyes picked him out obscurely in the ante room, talking to another man, mister Carraway, this is my friend, mister Wolfsheim, a small, flat nosed jew, raised his large head and regarded me with two fine growths of hair which luxuriated in
either nostril. After a moment, I discovered his tiny eyes in the half darkness, so I took one look at him, said mister Wolfsheim, shaking my hand earnestly. And what do you think I did? What? I inquired politely. But evidently he was not addressing me, for he dropped my hand and covered Gatsby with his expressive nose. I handed the money to Katspa, and I said, all right, Katspo, don't pay him a penny
until he shuts his mouth. He shut it then, and dare Catsby took an arm of each of us and moved forward into the restaurant, whereupon mister Wolfsheim swallowed a new sentence he was starting, and lapsed into a somnambulatory abstraction. Highballs, asked the head waiter. This is a nice restaurant here, said mister Wolfsheim, looking at the Presbyterian nymphs on the ceiling. But I like across the street. Better, Yes, highballs, agreed mister Gatsby.
And then to mister Wolfsheim, it's too hot over there. Hot and small, yes, said mister Wolfsheim. But full of memories. What place is that, I asked, the old Metropole. The old Metropole brooded, mister Wolfsheim, gloomily, filled with faces dead and gone, filled with friends count now forever. I can't forget, so long as I lives. The night they shot Rosy Rosenthall there it was six of us at the table, and
Rosie had eaten drunk a lot all evening. When it was almost morning, the waiter came up to him with a funny look and says, somebody wants to speak to him outside. All right, says Rosie, and begins to get up, and I pulled him down in his chair. Let the bastards come here if they weren't you, Rosy, But don't you so help me move outside this room. It was four o'clock in the morning then, and if we'd have raised the blinds, we'd have seen daylight. Did he go?
I asked, innocently, Sure he went. Mister Wolfsheim's nose flashed at me indignantly. He turned around in the door and says, don't let that veiter take away my coffee. And then he went out on the sidewalk, and they shot him three times in his full belly, and drew away. Four of them were electrocuted, I said, remembering five with Becca. His nozzles turned to me in an interested way. I understand you're looking for a
business connection. The juxtaposition of these two remarks was startling. Gatsby answered for me. Oh no, he exclaimed, this isn't the man. No. Mister Wolfsheim seemed disappointed. This is just a friend. I told you we'd talk about that some other time. I beg your boden, said mister Wolfsheim. I had the long man. A succulent hash arrived, and mister Wolfheim, forgetting the more sentimental atmosphere of the old Metropole, began to eat with
ferocious delicacy. His eyes meanwhile, roved very slowly all around the room. He completed the ark by turning to inspect the people directly behind. I think that except for my presence, he would have taken one short glance beneath our own table. Look here, old sport, said Gatsby, leaning toward me. I'm afraid I made you a little angry this morning in the car there
was the smile again, but this time I held out against it. I don't like mysteries, I answered, And I don't understand why you won't come out frankly and tell me what you want. Why has it all got to come through miss Baker. Oh, it's nothing underhand, he assured me. Miss Baker's a great sportswoman, you know, and she'd never do anything that wasn't all right. Suddenly he looked at his watch, jumped up and hurried from the room, leaving me with mister Wolfsheim at the table. He has
to telephone, said mister Wolfsheim, following him with his eyes. Fine fellow, isn't he handsome to look at and a perfect gentleman? Yes, he's an Oxford man. Oh, even to Oxford College in England. You know Oxford College. I've heard of it. It's one of the most famous colleges in the world. Have you known Gadsby for a long time? I inquired, several years, he answered, in a gratified way. I made the pleasure of his acquaintance after the war. But I knew I had discovered a
man of fine breeding. After I talked with him an hour, I said to myself, there is the kind of man you'd like to take home and introduce to your mother and sister. He paused, I see you're looking at my cuff buttons. I hadn't been looking at them, but I did now. They were composed of oddly familiar pieces of ivory, finest specimens of human morlas. He informed me. Well, I inspected them. That's a very interesting idea. Yeah. He flipped his sleeves up under his coat. Yeah.
Godsby's very careful about the women. He would never so much as look at the friends life. When the subject of this instinctive trust returned to the table and sat down, mister Wolfsheim drank his coffee with a jerk and got to his feet. I have enjoyed my lunch, he said, and I'm going to run off from you two young men before I outstay my welcome. Don't hurry, mere, said Gatsby without enthusiasm. Mister Wolfsheim raised his hand
in a sort of benediction. You're very polite, but I belong to another generation, he announced, solemnly. You sit here and discuss your sports and your young ladies. And he supplied an imaginary noun with another wave of his hand. As for me, I'm fifty years old, and I won't impose myself on you any thonga. As he shook hands and turned away, his tragic nose was trembling. I wondered if I had said anything to offend him. He becomes very sentimental, sometimes, explained Gatsby. This is one of
his sentimental days. He's quite a character around New York, a denizen of Broadway. Who is he anyhow? An actor? No? A dentist meyer wolfsheim No, he's a gambler. Gatsby hesitated, then added coolly, He's the man who fixed the World Series back in nineteen nineteen. Fixed the World Series, I repeated. The idea staggered me. I remembered, of course, that the World Series had been fixed in nineteen nineteen. But if I had thought of it at all, I would have thought of it as a
thing that merely happened, the end of some inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the fate of fifty million people with the single mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe. How did he happen to do that? I asked, after a minute, He just saw the opportunity. Why isn't he in jail? They can't get him old sport. He's a smart man. I insisted on paying the check. As the waiter brought my change, I caught the sight of Tom Buchanan across the crowded
room. Come along with me for a minute, I said, I've got to say hello to someone. When he saw us, Tom jumped up and took half a dozen steps in our direction. Where have you been, he demanded eagerly. Daisy's furious because you haven't called up. This is mister Gatsby, mister Buchanan. They shook hands briefly, and a strained, unfamiliar look of embarrassment came over Gatsby's face. How have you been anyhow, demanded Tom of me. How do you happen to come up this far to eat?
I've been having lunch with mister Gatsby. I turned toward mister Gatsby, but he was no longer there. One October day in nineteen seventeen, said Jordan Baker. That afternoon, sitting up very straight on a straight chair in the tea garden at the Plaza Hotel. I was walking along from one place to another, half on the sidewalks and half on the lawns. I was happier on the lawns because I had on shoes from England with rubber knobs on the
soles that bit into the soft ground. I had on a new plaid skirt also, that blew a little in the wind. And whenever this happened, the red, white and blue banners in front of all the houses stretched out stiff and said tat tat, tat tat in a disapproving way. The largest of the banners and the largest of the lawns belonged to Daisy Fay's house. She was just eighteen, two years older than me, and by far the
most popular of all the young girls in Louisville. She dressed in white and had a little white roadster, and all day long the telephone rang in her house and excited young officers from Camp Taylor demanded the privilege of monopolizing her that night, anyways, for an hour. When I came beside her house that morning, her white roadster was beside the curb, and she was sitting in
it with a lieutenant. I had never seen before. They were so engrossed in each other that she didn't see me until I was five feet away. Hello, Jordan, she called, unexpectedly, Please come here. I was flattered that she wanted to speak to me, because of all the older girls, I admired her most. She asked me if I was going to Red Cross to make bandages. I was well, then would I tell them that
she couldn't come that day. The officer looked at Daisy while she was speaking in a way that every young girl wants to be looked at some time, and because it seemed romantic to me. I have remembered the incident ever since. His name was Jay Gadsby, and I didn't lay eyes on him again for over four years. Even after I met him on Long Island, I didn't realize it was the same man. That was nineteen seventeen. By the next year, I had a few bows myself and I began to play in
tournaments, so I didn't see Daisy very often. She went with a slightly older crowd when she went with anyone at all. Wild rumors were circulating about her how her mother had found her packing her bag one winter night to go to New York and say goodbye to a soldier who was going overseas. She was effectually prevented, but she wasn't on speaking terms with her family For several
weeks. After that, she didn't play around with the soldiers anymore, but only with a few flat footed, shortsighted young men in town who couldn't get into the army at all. By the next autumn she was gay again, gay as ever. She had a debut after the armistice, and in February she was presumably engaged to a man from New Orleans. In June she married Tom Buchanan of Chicago, with more pomp and circumstance than Louisville ever knew before.
He came down with a hundred people in four private cars and hired a whole floor of the Molbach Hotel, and the day before the wedding he gave her a string of pearls valued at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I was a bridesmaid. I came into her room half an hour before the bridal dinner and found her lying on her bed, as lovely as the June night, in her flowered dress, and as drunk as a monkey. She had a bottle of so turn in one hand and a letter in the other.
Congratulate me, she muttered, never had a drink before, but oh, how I do enjoy it. What's the matter, Daisy? I was scared. I can tell you I've never seen a girl like that before. Here, dearies. She groped around in a waste basket she had with her on the bed and pulled out the string of pearls. Take them downstairs and give them back to whoever they belonged to tell them all, daisies, change her mine, say, Daisies, change her mine. She began to cry.
She cried and cried. I rushed out and found her mother's made and we locked the door and got her into a cold bath. She wouldn't let go of the letter. She took it into the tub with her and squeezed it up into a wet ball, and only let me leave it in the soap dish when she saw that it was coming to pieces like snow. But she didn't say another word. We gave her spirits of ammonia and put ice on her forehead and hooked her back into her dress. And half an hour later,
when we walked out of the room. The pearls were around her neck, and the incident was over. Next day, at five o'clock, she married Tom Buchanan without so much as a shiver and started off on a three months trip to the South seas. I saw them in Santa Barbara when they came back, and I thought I'd never seen a girl so mad about her husband. If he left the room for a minute, she'd look around uneasily and say, where's Tom gone? And where the most abstracted expression until she
saw him coming in the door. She used to sit on the sand with his head in her lap by the hour, rubbing her fingers over his eyes and looking at him with unfathomable delight. It was touching to see them together. It made you laugh in a hushed, fascinated way. That was in August, a week after I left Santa Barbara. Tom ran into a wagon on the Ventura Road one night and ripped a front wheel off his car. The girl who was with him got into the papers too, because her arm
was broken. She was one of the chambermaids in the Santa Barbara hotel. The next April, Daisy had her little girl and they went to France for a year. I saw them one spring in Cannes and later in Doville, and then they came back to Chicago to settle down. Daisy was popular in Chicago, as you know. They moved with a fast crowd, all of them young and rich and wild. But she came out with an absolutely perfect reputation. Perhaps because she doesn't drink. It's a great advantage not to drink
among hard drinking people. You can hold your tongue, and moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don't see or care. Perhaps Daisy never went in for a more after all, And yet there's something in that voice of hers. Well. About six weeks ago she heard the name Gatsby for the first time in years. It was when I asked you, do you remember if you knew Gatsby in West Egg after you had gone home. She came into my room and
woke me up and said, what Gatsby? And when I described him, I was half asleep. She said, in the strangest voice that it must be the man she used to know. It wasn't until then that I connected this Gatsby with the officer in her white car. When Jordan Baker had finished telling all this, we had left the plaza for half an hour and were
driving in a Victoria through Central Park. The sun had gone down behind the tall apartments of the movie stars in the West fifties, and the clear voices of children already gathered like crickets on the grass rose through the hot twilight. I'm the Sheik Varrabee. Your love belongs to me at night when you're asleep into your tental creep. It was a strange coincidence, I said, But it wasn't a coincidence at all. Why not Gatsby bought that house so that
Daisy would be just across the bay. Then it had not been merely the stars to which he had aspired on that June night. He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of his purposeless splendor. He wants to know, continued Jordan, if you'll invite Daisy to your house some afternoon and then let him come over. The modesty of the demand shook me. He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths,
so that he could come over some afternoon to a stranger's garden. Did I have to know all this before you could ask such a little thing. He's afraid he's waited so long he thought you might be offended. See, he's a regular tough underneath it all. Something worried me. Why didn't he ask you to arrange a meeting. He wants her to see his house, she explained, And your house is right next door. Ah. I think he half expected her to wander into one of his parties some night went on
Jordan, but she never did. Then he began asking people casually if they knew her, and I was one of the first he found. It was that night he sent for me at his dance, and you should have heard the elaborate way he worked up to it. Of course, I immediately suggested a luncheon in New York, and I thought he'd go mad. I don't want to do anything out of the way. He kept saying, I want to see her right next door. When I said you were a particular friend
of Tom's, he started to abandon the whole idea. He doesn't know very much about Tom, though he says he's read a Chicago paper for years, just on the chance of catching a glimpse of Daisy's name. It was dark now, and as we dipped her a little bridge, I put my arm around Jordan's golden shoulder and drew her toward me and asked her to dinner.
Suddenly I wasn't thinking of Daisy and Gatsby anymore, but of this clean, hard, limited person who dealt in universal skepticism, and who leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my arm. A phrase began to beat in my ears, with a sort of heady excitement. There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired. And Daisy ought to have something in her life, murmured Jordan to me. Does she want to see Gatsby? She's not to know about it. Gatsby doesn't want her to know.
You're just supposed to invite her to tea. We passed a barrier of dark trees, and then the facade of fifty ninth Street, A block of delicate, pale light beamed down into the park. Unlike Gatsby and Tom Buchanan, I had no girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark cornices of blinding signs. So I drew up the girl beside me, tightening my arms. Her wan scornful mouth smiled, and so I drew her up again, closer this time to my face. End of Chapter four