The Great Gatsby - Chapter 4

Gatsby takes Nick to lunch and introduces him to shady businessman Meyer Wolfsheim. Later, Jordan reveals that Gatsby was once in love with Daisy and still loves her. Gatsby hopes Nick will arrange a meeting between them. This chapter highlights Gatsby’s romantic obsession and the connection between wealth and crime. Summary by Dream AudioBooks

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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

(00:22):
his flowers. One time he killed a man who had
found out that he was nephew to von Hindenburg 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
time table the names of those who came to Gatsby's

(00:44):
house that summer. It is an old time table, 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

(01:05):
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 doctor Webster Sivett, who was drowned
last summer up in Maine, and the Hornbeams, and the

(01:26):
Willie Voltaires, and a whole clan named black Buck, who
always gathered in a corner and flipped up their noses
like goats at whosoever 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

(01:47):
one winter afternoon for no good reason at all. Clarence
and ive was from East Egg, as I remember. He
came only once in white knickerbockers and had a fight
with a bum named Etty in the garden. From farther
out on the island came the Cheatles and the O. R. P. Schraders,

(02:08):
and the Stonewall 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 dances came to and S. B. Whitebate,

(02:29):
who was well over sixty and Maurice a Flink and
the hammer Heads, and Beluga the tobacco importer and Beluga's
girls from West Egg came the Poles and the Mulreadies,
and Cecil Roebuck and Cecil Shone and Gulik the State Senator,
and Newton Orchid who controlled Films par Excellence, and eck

(02:52):
Hous and Clyde Cohen and Don s. Schwartze the Son
and Arthur mc carty, all connected with the movie in
one way or another, and the cat Lips and the
Bembergs and g Earl Muldoon, brother to that Muldoon who
afterwards strangled his wife. Da Fontano, the promoter came there

(03:14):
and Ed Legross and James b Rotgut Ferret and the
Dejongs and Ernest Lily. They came to gamble, and when
Ferret wandered into the garden, it meant he was cleaned
out and associated Traction would have to fluctuate profitably the
next day. A man named Clipspringer was there so often

(03:34):
and so long that he became known as the Boarder.
I doubt if he had any other home. Of theatrical people,
there were Gus Waysa and Horace O'Donovan and Lester Meyer
and George Duckweed and Francis Bull. Also from New York
were the Cromes and the back Isons, and the Dennikers,
and Russell Betty and the Corrigans, and the Kellehars and

(03:56):
the Doers and the Scullies, and s. W. Belcher and
the Smirks, and the young Quinns divorced now and Henry L. Palmetto,
who killed himself by jumping in front of a subway
train in Times Square. Benny mclenahan arrived always with four girls.
They were never quite the same ones in physical person,

(04:18):
but they were so identical one with another that it
inevitably seemed they had been there before. I have 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,

(04:41):
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 Albrouksberger, and
Miss Hog his fiancee, and Ardita Fitzpeters, and mister p. Jewett,

(05:01):
once head of the American Legion, and Miss Claudia Hip
with a man reputed to be her chauffeur, and a
prince of something, whom we called duke, and whose name,
if I ever knew it, I have forgotten. 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

(05:25):
up the rocky drive to my door and gave out
a burst of malady 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're having lunch

(05:46):
with me to day, 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
or rigid sitting in youth, and even more with the
formless grace of our nervous, sporadic games. This quality was

(06:11):
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 and closing of a hand.
He saw me looking with admiration at his car. It's pretty,
isn't it? Old sport? He jumped off to give me

(06:34):
a better view. Haven't 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 hat boxes and supper boxes
and tool boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of wind
shields that mirrored a dozen suns sitting down behind many

(06:59):
layers of glass in a sort of green leather conservatory.
We started to town. I had 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 had gradually faded, and he had become simply the

(07:21):
proprietor of an elaborate road house 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.

(07:43):
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

(08:03):
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

(08:26):
was brought up in America, but educated at Oxford, because
all my ancestors have been educated there for many years.
It is a family tradition. 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

(08:48):
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 wasn't 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,

(09:12):
and I came into a good deal of money. His
voice was solemn, as if the memory of that 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 in all the capitals of Europe, Paris, Venice, Rome,

(09:36):
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

(09:59):
that of a turbaned character leaking sawdust at every pore
as he pursued a tiger through the Bois de Boulogne.
Then came the war old Sport. It was a great relief,
and I tried very hard to die, but I seemed
to bear an enchanted life. I accepted a commission as
first lieutenant. When it began in the Argonne Forest, I

(10:21):
took two machine gun detachments so far forward that there
was a half mile gap on either side of us
where the infantry couldn't advance. We stayed there two days
and two nights, a hundred and thirty men with sixteen
Lewis guns. And when the infantry came up at last
they found the insignia of three German divisions among the
piles of dead. I was promoted to be a major,

(10:45):
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

(11:05):
brave struggles of the montenegro In 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.

(11:25):
He reached in his pocket and a piece of metal
slung on a ribbon, fell into my palm. That's the
one from Montenegro. To my astonishment, the thing had an
authentic look. ORDERI di Danilo ran the circular legend Montenegro,
Nicholas Rex turn it Major J. Gatsby. I read for

(11:53):
valor extraordinary. Here's another thing. I always carry a souvenir
of Oxford days. It was taken in Trinity Quad. The
man on my left is now the Earl of Dorcaster.
It was a photograph of half a dozen young men
in blazers, loafing in an archway, through which were visible

(12:13):
a host of spires. There was Gatsby, 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.

(12:38):
I'm going to make a big request of you to day,
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 thing that happened
to me. He hesitated, You'll hear about it this afternoon

(13:03):
at lunch. No, this afternoon, I happen to find out
that you're taking miss Baker to tea. Do you mean
you're in love with miss Baker? No, old Sport, I'm not,
but Miss Baker has kindly consented to speak to you
about this matter. I hadn't the faintest idea what this

(13:25):
matter was, but I was more annoyed than interested. I
hadn't asked Jordan to tea in order to discuss mister j. Gatsby.
I was sure the request would be something utterly fantastic,
and for a moment I was sorry I'd ever set
foot upon his overpopulated lawn. He wouldn't say another word.

(13:45):
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 cobbled
slum lined with the dark, undeserted saloons of the faded
nineteen hundreds. Then the valley of ashes opened out on
both sides of us, and I had a glimpse of

(14:07):
Missus Wilson straining at the garage pump with panting vitality.
As we went by, with fenders spread like wings, we
scattered light through half long island city, only half for
As we twisted among the pillars of the elevated I
heard the familiar jug jug spett of a motorcycle, and

(14:28):
a frantic policeman rode alongside all right old Sport called Gatsby.
We slowed down. Taking a white card from his wallet,
he waved it before the man's eyes. Right, you are agreed,
the policeman dipping his cap. Know you next time, mister Gatsby.
Excuse me, what was that I inquired the picture of Oxford.

(14:54):
I was able to do the commissioner a favor once,
and he sends me a Christmas card every year. Over
the Great 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.

(15:18):
The city seen from the Queensborough Bridge is always the
city seen 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

(15:41):
with 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
Blackwells Island, a limousine passed us, driven by a white chauffeur,
in which sat three modish negroes, two bucks and a girl.

(16:02):
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

(16:24):
in a well found 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 Volsheim. A small, flat nosed jew, raised his large
head and regarded me with two fine growths of hair

(16:47):
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 Volsheim, shaking my hand earnestly,
and what do you think I did? What? I inquired politely,

(17:07):
But evidently he was not addressing me, for he dropped
my hand and covered Gatsby with his expressive nose. I
handed the money to Kat's paw, and I said, all right,
Kat's paw, don't pay him a penny till he shuts
his mouth. He shut it then and there Gatsby took
an arm of each of us and moved forward into

(17:27):
the restaurant, whereupon mister Volfsheim swallowed a new sentence he
was starting, and lapsed into a somnambulatory abstraction. High Balls
asked the head waiter, this is a nice restaurant here,
said mister Volsheim, looking at the Presbyterian nymphs on the ceiling.
But I like across the street better. Yes, high balls,

(17:52):
agreed Gatsby. And then to mister Volsheim. It's too hot
over there. Hot and small, yes, said mister Volsheim. But
full of memories. What place is that, I asked, the
old Metropole. The old Metropole brooded, mister Volfsheim, gloomily, filled

(18:14):
with faces dead and gone, filled with friends gone now forever.
I can't forget so long as I live. The night
they shot Rosy Rosenthal. There it was six of us
at table, and Rosy 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 Rosy, and begins

(18:37):
to get up, and I pulled him down in his chair.
Let the bastards come in here if they want 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 raised of the blinds, we'd have seen daylight. Did
he go? I asked, innocently, sure, he went, mister Wolfsheim

(19:00):
nose flashed at me indignantly. He turned around in the
door and says, don't let that waiter take away my coffee.
Then he went out on the sidewalk, and they shot
him three times in his full belly and drove away.
Four of them were electrocuted, I said, remembering five with Becker.

(19:22):
His nostrils 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.

(19:44):
This is just a friend. I told you we'd talk
about that some other time. I beg your pardon, said
mister Wolfsheim, I had the wrong man. A succulent hash arrived,
and mister Volfsheim, forgetting the more sentim mental atmosphere of
the old metropol, began to eat with ferocious delicacy. His

(20:06):
eyes meanwhile roved very slowly all round 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

(20:27):
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 under hand,

(20:49):
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 the telephone, said mister Volfsheim, following him with
his eyes. Fine fellow, isn't he handsome to look at

(21:11):
and a perfect gentleman? Yes, he's an Oxford man. Oh,
he went 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 Gatsby for a

(21:31):
long time? I inquired, several years, he answered, in a
gratified way I made the pleasure of his acquaintance just
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's the kind of man you'd
like to take home and introduce to your mother and sister.

(21:52):
He paused, I see you are 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 molers, he informed me. Well, I inspected them.

(22:14):
That's a very interesting idea. Yeah. He flipped his sleeves
up under his coat. Yea, Gatsby's very careful about women.
He would never so much as look at a friend's wife.
When the subject of this instinctive trust returned to the
table and sat down, mister Wolsheim drank his coffee with

(22:36):
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, Meier, said Gatsby, without enthusiasm. Mister Wolfsheim raised
his hand in a sort of benediction. You're very polite,

(22:57):
but I belonged to another generation, he announced, solemnly. You
sit here and discussed your sports, and your young ladies
and your He supplied an imaginary noan with another wave
of his hand. As for me, I am fifty years old,
and I won't impose myself on you any longer. As

(23:19):
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 at Dennison of Broadway. Who is he anyhow? An actor? No,

(23:44):
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'sies. I repeated.
The idea staggered me. I remembered, of course, that the

(24:05):
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 a faith
of fifty million people with the single mindedness of a
burglar blowing a safe. How did he happen to do that?

(24:29):
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 sight of
Tom Buchanan across the crowded room. Come along with me

(24:51):
for a minute, I said, I've got to say hello
to some one. When he saw us, Tom jumped up
and took a half 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

(25:11):
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'd 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.

(25:36):
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

(25:57):
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 T T T TU in
a disapproving way. The largest of the banners and the

(26:18):
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

(26:39):
of monopolizing her that night. Anyways, for an hour. When
I came opposite 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,

(27:01):
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 the Red Cross and 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

(27:23):
a way that every young girl wants to be looked
at sometime, and because it seemed romantic to me. I
have remembered the incident ever since. His name was Jay Gatsby,
and I didn't lay eyes on him again for over
four years. Even after I had met him on Long Island,
I didn't realize it was the same man. That was

(27:44):
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 any one at all, wild.
Rumors were circulating about her how her mother had found
her packing her bag one winter night to go to

(28:04):
New York and say good bye 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 any more, but
only with a few flat footed, short sighted young men
in town who couldn't get into the army at all.

(28:25):
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

(28:45):
down with a hundred people in four private cars and
hired a whole floor of the Selbach Hotel, and the
day before the wedding he gave her a string of
pearls valued at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I
was bridesmaid. I came into her room half an hour
before the bridal dinner and found her lying on her bed,

(29:05):
as lovely as the June night in her flowered dress,
and as drunk as a monkey. She had a bottle
of souturne in one hand and a letter in the other.
Gratulate me, she muttered, never had a drink before, but oh,
how I do enjoy it. What's the matter, Daisy? I

(29:26):
was scared. I can tell you I'd never seen a
girl like that before. Here, DearS. She groped around in
a waste basket that she had with her on the
bed and pulled out the string of pearls. Take em
down stairs and give 'em back to whoever they belonged to.
Tell em all Daisies, change your mind, say Daisy's change

(29:47):
your mind. She began to cry. She cried and cried.
I rushed out and found her mother's maid, 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

(30:08):
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

(30:30):
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 wear the
most abstracted expression until she saw him coming in the door.

(30:54):
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

(31:14):
wagon on the Ventura Road one night and ripped the
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

(31:34):
spring in Khan and later in Douville, 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

(31:56):
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
your care. Perhaps Daisy never went in for amor at all,
and yet there's something in that voice of hers. Well.

(32:17):
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

(32:38):
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 into
Victoria through Central Park. The sun had gone down behind
the tall apartments of the movie stars in the West fifties,

(32:59):
and the clear voices of girls already gathered like crickets
on the grass rose through the hot twilight. I'm the
Sheikh of Araby. Your love belongs to me. At night,
when you're asleep into your tent, I'll creep. It was
a strange coincidence, I said. But it wasn't a coincidence

(33:23):
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

(33:46):
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 us mansion where he dispensed starlight to
casual moths, so that he could come over some afternoon

(34:06):
to a stranger's garden. Did I have to know all
this before he could ask such a little thing. He's
afraid he's waited so long he thought you might be offended.
You see, he's a regular tough underneath it all. Something
worried me. Why didn't he ask you to arrange a meeting.

(34:30):
He wants her to see his house, she explained, And
your house is right next door. Oh. 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 the first one he found. It was that

(34:52):
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 suggests that 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,

(35:12):
you are 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 under a
little bridge, I put my arm around Jordan's golden shoulder

(35:34):
and drew her toward me and asked her to dinner.
Suddenly I wasn't thinking of Daisy and Gatsby any more,
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

(35:58):
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

(36:22):
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 and blinding signs, And so I drew up the
girl beside me, tightening my arms. Her wan scornful mouth smiled,

(36:47):
and so I drew her up again, closer this time
to my face. End of Chapter four