'The Great Gatsby: Chapter 7' hackernoonbooks thegreatgatsby
It was when curiosity about Gatsby was at its highest that the lights in his house failed to go on one Saturday night—and, as obscurely as it had begun, his career as Trimalchio was over. Only gradually did I become aware that the automobiles which turned expectantly into his drive stayed for just a minute and then drove sulkily away. Wondering if he were sick I went over to find out—an unfamiliar butler with a villainous face squinted at me suspiciously from the door.
My commutation ticket came back to me with a dark stain from his hand. That anyone should care in this heat whose flushed lips he kissed, whose head made damp the pyjama pocket over his heart! The room, shadowed well with awnings, was dark and cool. Daisy and Jordan lay upon an enormous couch, like silver idols weighing down their own white dresses against the singing breeze of the fans.Jordan’s fingers, powdered white over their tan, rested for a moment in mine.Simultaneously I heard his voice, gruff, muffled, husky, at the hall telephone.
“The bles-sed pre-cious! Did mother get powder on your old yellowy hair? Stand up now, and say—How-de-do.” “What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon?” cried Daisy, “and the day after that, and the next thirty years?”“But it’s so hot,” insisted Daisy, on the verge of tears, “and everything’s so confused. Let’s all go to town!”“I’ve heard of making a garage out of a stable,” Tom was saying to Gatsby, “but I’m the first man who ever made a stable out of a garage.”
“All right,” broke in Tom quickly, “I’m perfectly willing to go to town. Come on—we’re all going to town.”“Come on!” His temper cracked a little. “What’s the matter, anyhow? If we’re going to town, let’s start.” “Shall we all go in my car?” suggested Gatsby. He felt the hot, green leather of the seat. “I ought to have left it in the shade.”“Well, you take my coupé and let me drive your car to town.”“Plenty of gas,” said Tom boisterously. He looked at the gauge. “And if it runs out I can stop at a drugstore. You can buy anything at a drugstore nowadays.”
“You think I’m pretty dumb, don’t you?” he suggested. “Perhaps I am, but I have a—almost a second sight, sometimes, that tells me what to do. Maybe you don’t believe that, but science—” Tom threw on both brakes impatiently, and we slid to an abrupt dusty stop under Wilson’s sign. After a moment the proprietor emerged from the interior of his establishment and gazed hollow-eyed at the car.“I’m sick,” said Wilson without moving. “Been sick all day.”“Well, shall I help myself?” Tom demanded. “You sounded well enough on the phone.”
In one of the windows over the garage the curtains had been moved aside a little, and Myrtle Wilson was peering down at the car. So engrossed was she that she had no consciousness of being observed, and one emotion after another crept into her face like objects into a slowly developing picture.
“We can’t argue about it here,” Tom said impatiently, as a truck gave out a cursing whistle behind us. “You follow me to the south side of Central Park, in front of the Plaza.” The room was large and stifling, and, though it was already four o’clock, opening the windows admitted only a gust of hot shrubbery from the Park. Daisy went to the mirror and stood with her back to us, fixing her hair.“Open another window,” commanded Daisy, without turning around.“The thing to do is to forget about the heat,” said Tom impatiently. “You make it ten times worse by crabbing about it.”“Why not let her alone, old sport?” remarked Gatsby. “You’re the one that wanted to come to town.
“They carried him into my house,” appended Jordan, “because we lived just two doors from the church. And he stayed three weeks, until Daddy told him he had to get out. The day after he left Daddy died.” After a moment she added. “There wasn’t any connection.”“That was his cousin. I knew his whole family history before he left. He gave me an aluminium putter that I use today.”
I wanted to get up and slap him on the back. I had one of those renewals of complete faith in him that I’d experienced before.“Open the whisky, Tom,” she ordered, “and I’ll make you a mint julep. Then you won’t seem so stupid to yourself… Look at the mint!”“Go on,” Gatsby said politely.They were out in the open at last and Gatsby was content.
Angry as I was, as we all were, I was tempted to laugh whenever he opened his mouth. The transition from libertine to prig was so complete.“Please don’t!” she interrupted helplessly. “Please let’s all go home. Why don’t we all go home?”“I want to know what Mr. Gatsby has to tell me.”“You must be crazy!” exclaimed Tom automatically.“She never loved you, do you hear?” he cried. “She only married you because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me.
“You’re crazy!” he exploded. “I can’t speak about what happened five years ago, because I didn’t know Daisy then—and I’ll be damned if I see how you got within a mile of her unless you brought the groceries to the back door. But all the rest of that’s a God damned lie. Daisy loved me when she married me and she loves me now.”“She does, though. The trouble is that sometimes she gets foolish ideas in her head and doesn’t know what she’s doing.” He nodded sagely. “And what’s more, I love Daisy too.
“Oh, you want too much!” she cried to Gatsby. “I love you now—isn’t that enough? I can’t help what’s past.” She began to sob helplessly. “I did love him once—but I loved you too.”“Even that’s a lie,” said Tom savagely. “She didn’t know you were alive. Why—there’s things between Daisy and me that you’ll never know, things that neither of us can ever forget.”“I want to speak to Daisy alone,” he insisted. “She’s all excited now—”“Of course it wouldn’t,” agreed Tom.“Of course it matters.
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