The Great Gatsby | Page 8

some woman?’ I repeated blankly.
Miss Baker nodded.
‘She might have the decency not to telephone him at din-
ner-time. Don’t you think?’
Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the
flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots and Tom
and Daisy were back at the table.
‘It couldn’t be helped!’ cried Daisy with tense gayety.
She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and
then at me and continued: ‘I looked outdoors for a minute
and it’s very romantic outdoors. There’s a bird on the lawn
that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard

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or White Star Line. He’s singing away——’ her voice sang
‘——It’s romantic, isn’t it, Tom?’
‘Very romantic,’ he said, and then miserably to me: ‘If
it’s light enough a?fer dinner I want to take you down to the
stables.’
The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook
her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact
all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments
of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being
lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look
squarely at every one and yet to avoid all eyes. I couldn’t
guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking but I doubt if even
Miss Baker who seemed to have mastered a certain hardy
skepticism was able utterly to put this fi?fh guest’s shrill me-
tallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the
situation might have seemed intriguing—my own instinct
was to telephone immediately for the police.
The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again.
Tom and Miss Baker, with several feet of twilight between
them strolled back into the library, as if to a vigil beside a
perfectly tangible body, while trying to look pleasantly in-
terested and a little deaf I followed Daisy around a chain
of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In its deep
gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee.
Daisy took her face in her hands, as if feeling its love-
ly shape, and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet
dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked
what I thought would be some sedative questions about her
little girl.

The Great Gatsby
 0

‘We don’t know each other very well, Nick,’ she said
suddenly. ‘Even if we are cousins. You didn’t come to my
wedding.’
‘I wasn’t back from the war.’
‘That’s true.’ She hesitated. ‘Well, I’ve had a very bad
time, Nick, and I’m pretty cynical about everything.’
Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she didn’t say
any more, and a?fer a moment I returned rather feebly to the
subject of her daughter.
‘I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything.’
‘Oh, yes.’ She looked at me absently. ‘Listen, Nick; let me
tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to
hear?’
‘Very much.’
‘It’ll show you how I’ve gotten to feel about—things.
Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows
where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned
feeling and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a
girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away
and wept. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope
she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this
world, a beautiful little fool.’
‘You see I