The Great Gatsby | Page 9

think everything’s terrible anyhow,’ she went
on in a convinced way. ‘Everybody thinks so—the most ad-
vanced people. And I KNOW. I’ve been everywhere and seen
everything and done everything.’ Her eyes flashed around
her in a defiant way, rather like Tom’s, and she laughed with
thrilling scorn. ‘Sophisticated—God, I’m sophisticated!’
The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my

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attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she
had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening
had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emo-
tion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she
looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face as if
she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished
secret society to which she and Tom belonged.
Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and
Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read
aloud to him from the ‘Saturday Evening Post’—the words,
murmurous and uninflected, running together in a sooth-
ing tune. The lamp-light, bright on his boots and dull on
the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper
as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her
arms.
When we came in she held us silent for a moment with
a li?fed hand.
‘To be continued,’ she said, tossing the magazine on the
table, ‘in our very next issue.’
Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her
knee, and she stood up.
‘Ten o’clock,’ she remarked, apparently finding the time
on the ceiling. ‘Time for this good girl to go to bed.’
‘Jordan’s going to play in the tournament tomorrow,’ ex-
plained Daisy, ‘over at Westchester.’
‘Oh,—you’re JORdan Baker.’
I knew now why her face was familiar—its pleasing con-
temptuous expression had looked out at me from many
rotogravure pictures of the sporting life at Asheville and

The Great Gatsby

Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I had heard some story of her
too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I had forgot-
ten long ago.
‘Good night,’ she said so?fly. ‘Wake me at eight, won’t
you.’
‘If you’ll get up.’
‘I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon.’
‘Of course you will,’ confirmed Daisy. ‘In fact I think
I’ll arrange a marriage. Come over o?fen, Nick, and I’ll sort
of—oh—fling you together. You know—lock you up acci-
dentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat,
and all that sort of thing——‘
‘Good night,’ called Miss Baker from the stairs. ‘I haven’t
heard a word.’
‘She’s a nice girl,’ said Tom a?fer a moment. ‘They oughtn’t
to let her run around the country this way.’
‘Who oughtn’t to?’ inquired Daisy coldly.
‘Her family.’
‘Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Be-
sides, Nick ’s going to look a?fer her, aren’t you, Nick? She’s
going to spend lots of week-ends out here this summer. I
think the home influence will be very good for her.’
Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in si-
lence.
‘Is she from New York?’ I asked quickly.
‘From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed togeth-
er there. Our beautiful white——‘
‘Did you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the ve-
randa?’ demanded Tom suddenly.

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‘Did I?’ She looked at me. ‘I can’t seem to remember, but I
think we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I’m sure we did.
It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know——‘
‘Don’t believe everything you hear, Nick,’ he advised
me.
I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few
minutes later I got up to go home. They came to the door
with me and stood side by side in a cheerful square of light.
As I started my motor Daisy peremptorily called ‘Wait!
‘I forgot to ask you something,