Tom was thoughtful for a moment.
“I’ll tell you,” he said. “We’ll get a room there and have a mint julep and talk it over.”
“Talk what over?” asked Daisy uneasily.
“What we’re going to do.” And he added casually, “Or whatever’s on your mind.”
“But I don’t want to take a room. I think it’s the silliest thing I ever——
“Whether you want to or not, that’s what we’re going to do,” he interrupted grimly.
Gatsby looked questioningly at Daisy.
“If you don’t want to——”
“She wants to,” said Tom. “And I’m quite able to talk to her myself.”
Daisy glanced quickly from one to the other, perceiving to her dismay that things had slipped a little. To avoid an immediate scene she must enclose herself and Gatsby into the same room with Tom for the afternoon.
“You come too,” she appealed to Jordan.
“It’s an insane idea,” I said, but this came too late. I had only to look at Tom and Gatsby to see that it was too late. We took a sitting room on the tenth floor of the Plaza Hotel.
The room was large and stifling, and 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.
“It’s a swell suite,” whispered Jordan respectfully, and everyone laughed. Our secondary preoccupation was with the conviction that this was all very funny.
“Open another window,” commanded Daisy, without turning around.
“There aren’t any more.”
“Well, we’d better put one in. We’d better telephone for an axe——”
Tom unrolled the bottle of whiskey from the concealing towel and set it on the table, and simultaneously the portentous melody of Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” began to float up to the window. There was a wedding in the ballroom below. We listened and presently the music faded to low chords as the ceremony began.
“Do you recognize it Daisy?” Tom inquired. “On the day they played it for us I didn’t suspect that you were so devoid of common sense.”
“Why not let her alone?” said Gatsby, not unpleasantly. “It was you who insisted we come to town.”
There was a moment’s silence. The telephone book slipped from its nail and splashed to the floor, whereupon Jordan whispered “Excuse me,” and we all laughed again.
“I’ll pick it up,” I offered.
“I’ve got it.” Gatsby examined the parted string, muttered “Hum!” in an interested way and tossed it on a chair.
“Mr. Gatsby,” said Tom. “Sometime I’d like to have a few words with you alone.”
“Just as you say, old sport.”
Tom laughed without smiling.
“That’s a great expression of yours, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“All this ’old sport’ business. Where’d you pick that up?”
“Now see here, Tom,” said Daisy, turning around from the mirror. “If you’re going to be rude and unpleasant I’m not going to stay here a minute, do you understand? I’m going to walk right out of here and go to—and go to a movie. You call up and order some ice and things for your mint julep. That’s what we came here for.”
As Tom picked up the phone a long cheer drifted in from the ballroom followed by intermittent cries of “Yea-ea-ea!” and finally by a burst of jazz as the dancing began. Hilariously we danced, Daisy and I, Gatsby and Jordan, while Tom at the telephone watched us with unrestful eyes.
“I want to get out,” whispered Daisy. “Can’t you fix it? If Tom has much to drink I don’t know what he’ll do.”
I tried and so did Jordan. We tried intermittently for an hour, and perhaps we might have succeeded had not Gatsby inopportunely decided to try himself. He pointedly disregarded Tom and turned to me.
“Let’s go, old sport. There’s no reason why we should swelter up in this room.”
We all got up except Tom.
“Wait a minute,” Tom said quietly. “Before we go I want to ask Mr. Gatsby one question.”
“Well?”
“What kind of a row are you trying to cause in my house anyhow?”
We all stood there perfectly still. Gatsby was a little pale but there was a joyous exaltation in his eyes as though he were glad it was to happen at last.
“He isn’t causing a row,” said Daisy. “You’re causing a row. Please have a little self control.”
“Self control!” repeated Tom incredulously. “I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. Well, if that’s the idea you can count me out… Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions and next they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white.”
Flushed with his impassioned gibberish he forgot Daisy for a moment and saw himself standing alone on the last barrier of civilization.
“We’re all white here,” murmured Jordan. “Except possibly Tom.”
“Oh, I know I’m not very popular. I don’t give big parties. I suppose you’ve got to make your house into a pigsty in order to have any friends—in the modern world.”
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.
“We can talk about my house later,” said Gatsby steadily, “when there are no ladies present. What I want to——”
“Who are you anyhow?” broke out Tom. “You’re one of that bunch that hang around with Meyer Wolfshiem—that much I happen to know.”
“I won’t stand this,” cried Daisy. “Oh, please let’s go out. I want to go home.”
“All right,” Tom agreed, and for a moment I thought she was going to get him away. “Just as soon as he realizes that his presumptuous little flirtation is over.”
Averting her eyes from both of them Daisy moved toward the door and Jordan and I followed.
“Wait a minute, Daisy,” Gatsby said. “He calls it a presumptuous little flirtation… Is it?”
She looked around helplessly.
“Is it?” he repeated.
She wanted to evade the question but even for that it was too late.
“No,” she admitted in a low voice.
At this point Jordan and I tried to go. Human sympathy has its curious limits and we were repelled by their self absorption, appalled by their conflicting desires. But we were called back by a look in Daisy’s eyes which seemed to say: “You have a certain responsibility for all this too.” Tom and Gatsby considered that we were leaving out of delicacy. They both insisted with competitive eagerness that we remain, as though neither of them had anything to conceal and it would be a privilege to partake vicariously of their emotions.
Tom made a small O with his mouth and leaned back in his chair, tapping his thick fingers together like a clergyman while his shining arrogant eyes darted at each of us in turn.
“Sit down, Daisy,” he said with an unsuccessful attempt at the paternal note. “What’s been going on? I want to know.”
We all sat down again.
“I’ll tell you,” Gatsby’s eyes met Tom’s. “Your wife doesn’t love you. Do you Daisy?”
“No.” Her answer was almost inaudible.
“Why of course she does!” exclaimed Tom.
Even Gatsby wasn’t satisfied with her answer.
“Please say right out whether you love him or not.”
“I don’t love him.”
But her reluctance was so perceptible that Gatsby stood up as if he had been betrayed.
“I don’t understand you,” he said with less confidence. “I didn’t know there was any doubt about it.” No one spoke. “If there is, of course—I’ll go away.”
That there should be the faintest reluctance in Daisy’s admission had so startled him that he took a step toward the door.
“Oh, don’t go!” she cried in distress. “I love you too.”
He turned slowly around, his face wrinkling up, his eyes opening and closing rapidly.
“You love me too,” he repeated.
“I didn’t mean that.”
The assertion was too shocking, too incredible for him to grasp—it slipped away from him as he clutched with relief at its retraction.
“Of course Daisy loves me,” said Tom with gruff assurance. “The trouble is she doesn’t know it. Sometimes she gets foolish ideas in her head, that’s all.” He nodded sagely. “And I love Daisy too. Once in awhile I go off on a spree and make a fool of myself but I always come back and in my heart I love her all the time.”
“You’re revolting,” said Daisy. Her voice fell an octave lower and filled the room with thrilling scorn.
But now that Tom knew that this was no obscure blow at him from a revengeful heaven, but only a comprehensible phenomenon of desire his confidence reasserted itself.
“You came near making a serious mistake, Daisy. It’s a good thing I found out in time.”
“Why should you care?” she demanded.
“Of course I care. And I’m going to take better care of you from now on.”
“You don’t understand,” Gatsby said excitedly. “You’re not going to take care of her any more.”
“Really?” Tom opened his eyes wide and laughed. He could I afford to control himself now. “Why not?”
“Because she’s leaving you.”
“Nonsense.”
“I am, though,” said Daisy with a visible effort.
Tom considered, looking from one to the other and finding the idea incredible.
“Daisy wouldn’t leave me,” he said, after a moment. “She could never love anybody but me.”
She was listening and Gatsby saw that she was; he blinked continually now, as if the world were slipping sideways before his eyes.
To my surprise Tom began to talk with husky tenderness about 1 their honeymoon, while from the ballroom below muffled and suffocating chords drifted in on hot waves of air.
“Do you remember how we used to swim in the early morning at Kapiolani, Daisy?”
“Please don’t.” All the rancor and scorn was gone from her
