“Nick?” He asked again.
“What?”
“Want any?”
“No … I just remembered that today’s my birthday.”
I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road of a
new decade.
It was seven o’clock when we got into the coupé with him and started
for Long Island. Tom talked incessantly, exulting and laughing, but
his voice was as remote from Jordan and me as the foreign clamour on
the sidewalk or the tumult of the elevated overhead. Human sympathy
has its limits, and we were content to let all their tragic arguments
fade with the city lights behind. Thirty—the promise of a decade of
loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning
briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair. But there was Jordan beside
me, who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten
dreams from age to age. As we passed over the dark bridge her wan face
fell lazily against my coat’s shoulder and the formidable stroke of
thirty died away with the reassuring pressure of her hand.
So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The young Greek, Michaelis, who ran the coffee joint beside the
ash-heaps was the principal witness at the inquest. He had slept
through the heat until after five, when he strolled over to the
garage, and found George Wilson sick in his office—really sick, pale
as his own pale hair and shaking all over. Michaelis advised him to go
to bed, but Wilson refused, saying that he’d miss a lot of business if
he did. While his neighbour was trying to persuade him a violent
racket broke out overhead.
“I’ve got my wife locked in up there,” explained Wilson calmly.
“She’s going to stay there till the day after tomorrow, and then we’re
going to move away.”
Michaelis was astonished; they had been neighbours for four years, and
Wilson had never seemed faintly capable of such a statement.
Generally he was one of these worn-out men: when he wasn’t working, he
sat on a chair in the doorway and stared at the people and the cars
that passed along the road. When anyone spoke to him he invariably
laughed in an agreeable, colourless way. He was his wife’s man and not
his own.
So naturally Michaelis tried to find out what had happened, but Wilson
wouldn’t say a word—instead he began to throw curious, suspicious
glances at his visitor and ask him what he’d been doing at certain
times on certain days. Just as the latter was getting uneasy, some
workmen came past the door bound for his restaurant, and Michaelis
took the opportunity to get away, intending to come back later. But he
didn’t. He supposed he forgot to, that’s all. When he came outside
again, a little after seven, he was reminded of the conversation
because he heard Mrs. Wilson’s voice, loud and scolding, downstairs in
the garage.
“Beat me!” he heard her cry. “Throw me down and beat me, you dirty
little coward!”
A moment later she rushed out into the dusk, waving her hands and
shouting—before he could move from his door the business was over.
The “death car” as the newspapers called it, didn’t stop; it came out
of the gathering darkness, wavered tragically for a moment, and then
disappeared around the next bend. Mavro Michaelis wasn’t even sure of
its colour—he told the first policeman that it was light green. The
other car, the one going toward New York, came to rest a hundred yards
beyond, and its driver hurried back to where Myrtle Wilson, her life
violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled her thick dark
blood with the dust.
Michaelis and this man reached her first, but when they had torn open
her shirtwaist, still damp with perspiration, they saw that her left
breast was swinging loose like a flap, and there was no need to listen
for the heart beneath. The mouth was wide open and ripped a little at
the corners, as though she had choked a little in giving up the
tremendous vitality she had stored so long.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
We saw the three or four automobiles and the crowd when we were still
some distance away.
“Wreck!” said Tom. “That’s good. Wilson’ll have a little business at
last.”
He slowed down, but still without any intention of stopping, until, as
we came nearer, the hushed, intent faces of the people at the garage
door made him automatically put on the brakes.
“We’ll take a look,” he said doubtfully, “just a look.”
I became aware now of a hollow, wailing sound which issued incessantly
from the garage, a sound which as we got out of the coupé and walked
toward the door resolved itself into the words “Oh, my God!” uttered
over and over in a gasping moan.
“There’s some bad trouble here,” said Tom excitedly.
He reached up on tiptoes and peered over a circle of heads into the
garage, which was lit only by a yellow light in a swinging metal
basket overhead. Then he made a harsh sound in his throat, and with a
violent thrusting movement of his powerful arms pushed his way
through.
The circle closed up again with a running murmur of expostulation; it
was a minute before I could see anything at all. Then new arrivals
deranged the line, and Jordan and I were pushed suddenly inside.
Myrtle Wilson’s body, wrapped in a blanket, and then in another
blanket, as though she suffered from a chill in the hot night, lay on
a worktable by the wall, and Tom, with his back to us, was bending
over it, motionless. Next to him stood a motorcycle policeman taking
down names with much sweat and correction in a little book. At first I
couldn’t find the source of the high, groaning words that echoed
clamorously through the bare garage—then I saw Wilson standing on the
raised threshold of his office, swaying back and forth and holding to
the doorposts with both hands. Some man was talking to him in a low
voice and attempting, from time to time, to lay a hand on his
shoulder, but Wilson neither heard nor saw. His eyes would drop slowly
from the swinging light to the laden table by the wall, and then jerk
back to the light again, and he gave out incessantly his high,
horrible call:
“Oh, my Ga-od! Oh, my Ga-od! Oh, Ga-od! Oh, my Ga-od!”
Presently Tom lifted his head with a jerk and, after staring around
the garage with glazed eyes, addressed a mumbled incoherent remark to
the policeman.
“M-a-v—” the policeman was saying, “—o—”
“No, r—” corrected the man, “M-a-v-r-o—”
“Listen to me!” muttered Tom fiercely.
“r—” said the policeman, “o—”
“g—”
“g—” He looked up as Tom’s broad hand fell sharply on his shoulder.
“What you want, fella?”
“What happened?—that’s what I want to know.”
“Auto hit her. Ins’antly killed.”
“Instantly killed,” repeated Tom, staring.
“She ran out ina road. Son-of-a-bitch didn’t even stopus car.”
“There was two cars,” said Michaelis, “one comin’, one goin’, see?”
“Going where?” asked the policeman keenly.
“One goin’ each way. Well, she”—his hand rose toward the blankets but
stopped halfway and fell to his side—“she ran out there an’ the one
comin’ from N’York knock right into her, goin’ thirty or forty miles
an hour.”
“What’s the name of this place here?” demanded the officer.
“Hasn’t got any name.”
A pale well-dressed negro stepped near.
“It was a yellow car,” he said, “big yellow car. New.”
“See the accident?” asked the policeman.
“No, but the car passed me down the road, going faster’n forty. Going
fifty, sixty.”
“Come here and let’s have your name. Look out now. I want to get his
name.”
Some words of this conversation must have reached Wilson, swaying in
the office door, for suddenly a new theme found voice among his
grasping cries:
“You don’t have to tell me what kind of car it was! I know what kind
of car it was!”
Watching Tom, I saw the wad of muscle back of his shoulder tighten
under his coat. He walked quickly over to Wilson and, standing in
front of him, seized him firmly by the upper arms.
“You’ve got to pull yourself together,” he said with soothing
gruffness.
Wilson’s eyes fell upon Tom; he started up on his tiptoes and then
would have collapsed to his knees had not Tom held him upright.
“Listen,” said Tom, shaking him a little. “I just got here a minute
ago, from New York. I was bringing you that coupé we’ve been talking
about. That yellow car I was driving this afternoon wasn’t mine—do you
hear? I haven’t seen it all afternoon.”
Only the negro and I were near enough to hear what he said, but the
policeman caught something in the tone and looked over with truculent
eyes.
“What’s all that?” he demanded.
“I’m a friend of his.” Tom turned his head but kept his hands firm on
Wilson’s body. “He says he knows the car that did it … It was a yellow
car.”
Some dim impulse moved the policeman to look suspiciously at Tom.
“And what colour’s your car?”
“It’s a blue car, a coupé.”
“We’ve come straight from New York,” I said.
Someone who had been driving a little behind us confirmed this, and
the policeman turned away.
“Now, if you’ll let me have that name again correct—”
Picking up Wilson like a doll, Tom carried him into the office, set
him down in a chair, and came back.
“If somebody’ll come here and sit with him,” he snapped
authoritatively. He watched while the two men standing closest glanced
at each other and went unwillingly into the room. Then Tom shut the
door on them and came down the single step, his eyes avoiding the
table. As he passed close to me he whispered: “Let’s get out.”
Self-consciously, with his authoritative arms breaking the way, we
pushed through the still gathering crowd, passing a hurried doctor,
case in hand, who had been sent for in wild hope half an hour ago.
Tom drove slowly until we were beyond the bend—then his foot came down
hard, and the coupé raced along through the night. In a little while I
heard a low husky sob, and saw that the tears were overflowing down
his face.
“The God damned coward!” he whimpered. “He didn’t even stop his car.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Buchanans’ house floated suddenly toward us through the dark
rustling trees. Tom stopped beside the porch and looked up at the
second floor, where two windows bloomed with light among the vines.
“Daisy’s home,” he said. As we got out of the car he glanced at me and
frowned slightly.
“I ought to have dropped you in West Egg, Nick. There’s nothing we can
do tonight.”
A change had come over him, and he spoke gravely, and with decision.
As we walked across the moonlight gravel to the porch he disposed of
the situation in a few brisk phrases.
“I’ll telephone for a taxi to take you home, and while you’re waiting
you and Jordan better go in the kitchen and have them get you some
supper—if you want any.” He opened the door. “Come in.”
“No, thanks. But I’d be glad if you’d order me the taxi. I’ll wait
outside.”
Jordan put her hand on my arm.
“Won’t you come in, Nick?”
“No, thanks.”
I was feeling a little sick and I wanted to be alone. But Jordan
lingered for a moment more.
“It’s only half-past nine,” she said.
I’d be damned if I’d go in; I’d had enough of all of them for one day,
and suddenly that included Jordan too. She must have seen something of
this in my expression, for she turned abruptly away and ran up the
porch steps into the house. I sat down for a few minutes with my head
in my hands, until I heard the phone taken up inside and the butler’s
voice calling a taxi. Then I walked slowly down the drive away from
the house, intending to wait by the gate.
I hadn’t gone twenty yards when I heard my name and Gatsby stepped
from between two bushes into the path. I must have felt pretty weird
by that time, because I could think of nothing except the luminosity
of his pink suit under the moon.
“What are you doing?” I inquired.
“Just standing here, old sport.”
Somehow, that seemed a despicable occupation. For all I knew he was
going to rob the house in a moment; I wouldn’t have been surprised to
see sinister faces, the faces of “Wolfshiem’s people,” behind him in
the dark shrubbery.
“Did you see any trouble on the road?” he asked after a minute.
“Yes.”
He hesitated.
“Was she killed?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so; I told Daisy I thought so. It’s better that the shock
should all come at once. She stood it pretty well.”
He spoke as if Daisy’s reaction was the only thing that mattered.
“I got to West Egg by a side road,” he went on, “and left the car in
my garage. I don’t think anybody saw us, but of course I can’t be
sure.”
I disliked him so much by this time that I didn’t find it necessary to
tell him he was wrong.
“Who was the woman?” he inquired.
“Her name was Wilson. Her husband owns the garage. How the devil did
it happen?”
“Well, I tried to swing the wheel—” He broke off, and suddenly I
guessed at the truth.
“Was Daisy driving?”
“Yes,” he said after a moment, “but of course I’ll say I was. You see,
when we left New York she was very nervous and she thought it would
steady her to drive—and this woman rushed out at us just as we were
passing a car coming the other way. It all happened in a minute, but
it seemed to me that she wanted to speak to us, thought we were
somebody she knew. Well, first Daisy turned away from the woman toward
the other car, and then she lost her nerve and turned back. The second
my hand reached the wheel I felt the shock—it must have killed her
instantly.”
“It ripped her open—”
“Don’t tell me, old sport.” He winced. “Anyhow—Daisy stepped on it. I
tried to make her stop, but she couldn’t, so I pulled on the emergency
brake. Then she fell over into my lap and I drove on.
“She’ll be all right tomorrow,” he said presently. “I’m just going to
wait here and see if he tries to bother her about that unpleasantness
this afternoon. She’s locked herself into her room, and if he tries
any brutality she’s going to turn the light out and on again.”
“He won’t touch her,” I said. “He’s not thinking about her.”
“I don’t trust him, old sport.”
“How long are you going to wait?”
“All night, if necessary. Anyhow, till they all go to bed.”
A new point of view occurred to me. Suppose Tom found out that Daisy
had been driving. He might think he saw a connection in it—he might
think anything. I looked at the house; there were two or three bright
windows downstairs and the pink glow from Daisy’s room on the ground
floor.
“You wait here,” I said. “I’ll see if there’s any sign of a
commotion.”
I walked back along the border of the lawn, traversed the gravel
softly, and tiptoed up the veranda steps. The drawing-room curtains
were open, and I saw that the room was empty. Crossing the porch where
we had dined that June night three months before, I came to a small
rectangle of light which I guessed was the pantry window. The blind
was drawn, but I found a rift at the sill.
Daisy and Tom were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table,
with a plate of cold fried chicken between them, and two bottles of
ale. He was talking intently across the table at her, and in his
earnestness his hand had fallen upon and covered her own. Once in a
while she looked up at him and nodded in agreement.
They weren’t happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or the
ale—and yet they weren’t unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air
of natural intimacy about the picture, and anybody would have said
that they were conspiring together.
As I tiptoed from the porch I heard my taxi feeling its way along the
dark road toward the house. Gatsby was waiting where I had left him in
the drive.
“Is it all quiet up there?” he asked anxiously.
“Yes, it’s all quiet.” I hesitated. “You’d better come home and get
some sleep.”
He shook his head.
“I want to wait here till Daisy goes to bed. Good night, old sport.”
He put his hands in his coat pockets and turned back eagerly to his
scrutiny of the house, as though my presence marred the sacredness of
the vigil. So I walked away and left him standing there in the
moonlight—watching over nothing.