[Music] the great gatsby chapter three there was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights in his blue garden men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars at high tide in the afternoon i watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motorboats slit the water of the sound drawing acroplanes over cataracts of foam on weekends his rolls-royce became an omnibus bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all the trains and on mondays eight servants including an extra gardener toiled all day with mops and scrubbing brushes and hammers and garden shears repairing the ravages of the night before every friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruitier in new york every monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves there was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of 200 oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed 200 times by a butler's thumb at least once a fortnight a corp corporate caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a christmas tree of gatsby's enormous garden on buffet tables garnished with glycerin hors d'oeuvres spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin design and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched a dark gold in the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up stocked with gins and liquors with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another by seven o'clock the orchestra had arrived no thin five piece affair but a whole pit full of oboes and trombones and saxophones and veals and cornets and piccolos and low high drums the last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing up stairs the cars from new york are parked five deep in the drive and already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colors and hair shorn in strange new ways and shawls beyond the dreams of castile the bar is now in full swing and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside until the air is alive with chatter and laughter and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names the lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music and the opera of voices pitches a key hire laughter is easier minute by minute spilled with prodigality tipped out a cheerful word the groups change more swiftly swell with new arrivals dissolve and form in the same breath already there are wanderers confident girls who weave here and there amongst the stouter and more stable become a sharp joyous moment the center of a group and then excited with triumph glide on through the sea change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing lights suddenly one of these gypsies and trembling opal seizes a cocktail out of the air dumps it down for courage and moving her hands like frisco dances out alone on the canvas platform a momentary hush the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is gilda gray's understudy from the follies the party has begun i believe that on the first night i went to gaspi's house i was one of the few guests who had actually been invited people were not invited they went there they got into automobiles which bore them out to long island and somehow they ended up gatsby's door once they were there they were introduced by somebody who knew gatsby and after that they conducted themselves according to the rules of behavior associated with amusement parks sometimes they came and went without having met gaspy at all came for the party with a simplicity of heart that was its own ticket of admission i had actually been invited a chauffeur in a uniform of robin's egg blue crossed my lawn early that saturday morning with a surprisingly formal note from his employer the honor would be entirely gatsby's it said if i would attend his little party that night he had seen me several times and had intended to call on me long before but a peculiar combination of circumstances had prevented it signed jay gatsby in a majestic hand dressed up in white flannels i went over to his lawn a little after seven and wandered round ill at ease among swirls of eddies of people i did not know though here and there was a face i had recognized on the commuting train i was immediately struck by the number of young englishmen dotted about all well-dressed all looking a little hungry and all talking in low earnest voices to solid and prosperous americans i was sure that they were selling something bonds or insurance or automobiles they were at least agonizingly aware of the easy money in the vicinity and convinced that it was theirs for a few words in the right key as soon as i arrived i made an attempt to find my host but the two or three people of whom i asked his whereabouts stared at me in such an amazed way and denied so vehemently any knowledge of his movements that i slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table the only place in the garden where a single man could linger without looking purposeless and alone i was on my way to get roaring drunk from sheer embarrassment when jordan baker came out of the house and stood at the head of the marble steps leaning a little backwards and looking with contemptuous interest down into the welcome garden not i found it necessary to attach myself to someone before i should begin to address cordial remarks to the pastors by hello i roared advancing towards her my voice seemed unnaturally loud across the garden i thought you might be here she responded absently as i came up i remembered you lived next door to she held my hand impersonally as a promise that she'd take care of me in a minute and gave her ear to two girls in twin yellow dresses who stopped at the foot of the steps hello they cried together sorry you didn't win that was for the golf tournament she had lost in the finals the week before you don't know who we are said one of the girls but we met you about a month ago you've dyed your hair since then remarked jordan and i started but the girls had moved casually on and her remark was addressed to the premature moon produced like the supper no doubt out of a caterer's basket with jordan slender golden arm resting in mine we descended the steps and sauntered about the garden a tray of cocktails floated at us through the twilight and we sat down at the table with the two girls in yellow and three men each one introduced to us as mr mumble do you come to these parties often inquired jordan to the girl to cite her the last one was the one i met you at answered the girl in an alert confident voice she turned to her companion wasn't it for you lucille it was for lucille too i like to come lucille said i never care what i do so i always have a good time when i was here last i told my gown on a chair and he asked me my name and address and inside of a week i got a package from quarias with a new evening gown in it did you keep it asked jordan sure i did i was going to wear it tonight but it was too big in the bust and it had to be altered it was gas blue with lavender beads 265 dollars there's something funny about a fellow that'll do a thing like that said the other girl eagerly he doesn't want any trouble with anybody who doesn't i inquired gatsby somebody told me the two girls and jordan leaned together confidently somebody told me that they thought he killed a man once a thrill passed over all of us the three mr mumbles bent forward and listened eagerly i don't think it is so much that argued lucille skeptically it is more that he was a german spy during the war one of the men nodded in confirmation oh no said the first girl it couldn't be that because he was in the american army during the war as our credulity switched back to her she leaned forward with enthusiasm you look at him sometimes when he thinks nobody's looking at him i'll bet he killed a man she narrowed her eyes and shivered lucille shivered we all turned and looked around for gatsby it was testimony to the romantic speculation that he inspired that there were whispers about him from those that found little that it was necessary to whisper about in this world in the first supper there would be another one after midnight was now being served and jordan invited me to join her own party who was spread around a table on the other side of the garden there were three married couples and jordan's escort a persistent undergraduate given to violent innuendo and obviously under the impression that sooner or later jordan was going to yields to him a per person to a greater or lesser degree instead of rambling this party had perceived a dignified homogeneity and assumed to itself the function of representing the stated nobility of the countryside east egg condescending to west egg and carefully on its guard against the spectroscopic deity let's get out whispered jordan after a somehow wasteful and inappropriate half hour this is too much polite for me we got up and she explained that we were going to find the host i had never met him she said and it was making me uneasy the undergraduate nodded in a cynical melancholy way the bar where we first glance was crowded but gatsby was not there she couldn't find him from the top of the steps and he wasn't on the veranda on a chance we tried an important looking door and walked into a high gothic library paneled with carved english oak and probably transported complete from some ruin overseas a stout middle-aged man with enormous owl-eyed spectacles was sitting somewhat drunk on the edge of a great table staring with unsteady concentration at the shelves of books as we entered he wheeled excitedly around and examined jordan from head to foot what do you think he demanded impetuously about what he waved his hand towards the bookshelves about that as a matter of fact you needn't bother to ascertain ascertained they're real the books he nodded absolutely real have pages and everything i thought they'd be nice durable cardboard matter of fact they're absolutely real pages and here let me show you taking our skepticism for granted he rushed to the bookcases and returned with volume 1 of the stoddard lectures see he cried triumphantly it's a bona fide piece of printed matter it fooled me this fella is a regular belasco it's a triumph what thoroughness what realism knew when to stop too didn't cut the pages but what do you want what do you expect he snatched the book from me and replaced it hastily on its shelf muttering that if one brick was removed the whole library was liable to collapse who brought you he demanded or did you just come i was brought most people were brought jordan looked at him alertly cheerfully without answering i was brought by a woman named roosevelt he continued mrs claude roosevelt do you know her i met her somewhere last night i'd been drunk for about a week now and i thought it might sober me up to sit in a library has it a little bit i think i can't tell yet i've only been here an hour did i tell you about the books they're real there you told us we shook hands with him gravely and went back outdoors there was dancing now on the canvas in the garden old men pushing young girls backwards in eternal graceless circles superior couples holding each other tortuously fashionably and keeping in the corners and a great number of single girls dancing individually or leaving the orchestra for a moment of the burden of the banjo or the traps by midnight the hilarity had increased a celebrated tenor had sung an italian and the notorious contralto had sung in jazz and between the numbers people were doing stunts all over the garden while happy vactuous bursts of laughter rose towards the summer sky a pair of stage twins who turned out to be the girls in yellow did a baby act in costume and champagne was served in glasses bigger than finger bowls the moon had risen higher and floating in the sound was a triangle of silver scales trembling a little to the stiff tinny dip of the banjos on the lawn i was still with jordan baker we were sitting at a table with a man of about my age and a rowdy little girl who gave way upon the slightest provocation to uncontrollable laughter i was enjoying myself now i had taken two finger bowls of champagne and the scene had changed before my eyes into something significant elemental and profound at a lull in the entertainment the man looked at me and smiled your face is familiar he said politely weren't you in the third division during the war why yes i was in the ninth machine gun battalion i was in the seventh infantry until june 1918. i knew i'd seen you somewhere before we talked for a moment about some wet gray little villagers in france evidently he lived in this vicinity for he told me that he had just bought a hydroplane and was going to try it out in the morning want to go with me whole sport just near the shore along the sound what time any time that suits you best it was on the tip of my tongue to ask his name when jordan looked around and smiled having a gay time now she inquired much better i turned again to my acquaintance this is an unusual party for me i haven't seen the host i live over there i waved my hand to the invisible hedge in the distance and this man gatsby sent over his chauffeur with an invitation for a moment he looked at me as if he failed to understand i'm gatsby he said suddenly what i exclaimed oh i beg your pardon i thought you knew old sport i'm afraid i'm not a very good host he smiled understandingly much more than understandingly it was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it that you may come across four or five times in your life it faced or seemed to face the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor it understood you just so far as you want it to be understood and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that at your best you hoped to convey precisely at that point it vanished and i was looking at an elegant young roughneck a year or two over 30 whose elaborate formally of speech just missed being absurd sometime before he introduced himself i got a strong impression that he was picking his words with care almost at the moment when mr gatsby identified himself a butler hurried towards him with the information that chicago was calling him on the wire he excused himself with a small bow that included each of us in turn if you want anything just ask for an old spot he urged me excuse me i will rejoin you later when he was gone i turned immediately to jordan constrained to assure her of my surprise i expected that mr gatsby would be a florid corpulent person in his middle years who is he i demanded do you know he's just a man named gatsby where is he from i mean and what does he do now you're started on the subject she answered with a one smile well he told me once he was an oxford man a dim background started to take shape behind him but at her next remark it faded away however i don't believe it why not i don't know she insisted i just don't think he went there something in her tone reminded me of the other girls is i think he killed a man and had the effect of stimulating my curiosity i would have accepted without question the information that gatsby sprang from the swamps of louisiana or from the lower east side of new york that was comprehensible but young men didn't at least in my provincial experience i believe they didn't drift coolly out of nowhere and buy a palace on long island sound anyhow he gives large parties changing the subject with an urban distaste for the concrete and i like large parties they're so intimate at small parties there isn't any privacy there was a boom of bass drum and the voice of the orchestra leader rang out suddenly above the echolalia of the garden ladies and gentlemen he cried at the request of mr gatsby we are going to play for you mr vladimir totsoff's latest work which attracted so much attention at the carnegie hall last may if you read the papers you know there was a big sensation he smiled with the jovial condescension and added some sensation whereupon everybody laughed this piece is known he concluded lustily as vladimir tossed off's jazz history of the world the nature of toffstop's composition eluded me because just as it began my eyes fell on gatsby standing alone on the marble steps and looking from one group to another with the proving eyes his tense skin was drawn attractively tight on his face and his short hair looked as though it were trimmed every day i could see nothing sinister about him i wondered if the fact that he was not drinking helped to set him off from his guests for it seemed to me that he grew more correct as the fraternal hilarity increased when the jazz history of the world was over girls were putting their heads on men's shoulders in a puppyish convenient way girls were swimming backwards playfully into men's arms even into groups knowing that someone would arrest their falls but no one swooned backwards on gatsby and no french bob touched gaspy's shoulder and no singing quartets were formed with gatsby's head for one link i beg your pardon mr gaspi's butler was suddenly standing beside us miss baker he inquired i beg your pardon but mr gaspi would like to speak to you alone with me she exclaimed in surprise yes madam she got up slowly raising her eyebrows at me and astonishment and followed the butler towards the house i noticed that she wore her evening dress all her dresses like sports clothes there was a jauntiness about her movements as if she had learned to walk upon a golf course on a clean crisp morning i was alone and it was almost two for some time confused intriguing sounds had issued from a long many windowed room which overhung the terrace eluding jordan's undergraduate who was now engaged in an obstetrical conversation with two chorus girls who had implored me to join him i went inside the large room was full of people one of the girls in yellow was playing the piano and beside her stood a tall red-haired young lady from a famous chorus engaged in song she had drunk a quantity of champagne and during the course of her song she had decided inevitably that everything was very very sad she was not only singing she was weeping too whenever there was a pause in the song she filled it with gasping broken sobs and then took up the lyric again in a quavering soprano the tears coursed down her cheek not freely however for when they came into contact with their heavily beaded eyelashes they assumed an inky color and pursued the rest of the way down in slow black river lights a humorous suggestion was made that she sing the notes on her face whereupon she threw up her hands sank into a chair and went off into a deep venous sleep she had a fight with a man who says he was her husband i explained to girl at my elbow i looked around most of the remaining women were now having fights with men said to be their husbands even jordan's party the quartet from east egg were rent asunder by dissension one of the men was talking with curious intensity to a young actress and his wife after attempting to laugh at the situation in a dignified and indifferent way broke down entirely and resorted to flank attacks at intervals she appeared suddenly at his side like an angry diamond and hissed you promised into his ear the reluctance to go home was not confined to wayward men the hall was at present occupied by two deplorably sober men and their highly indignant wives the wives were sympathizing with each other in slightly raised voices whenever he sees i'm having a good time he wants to go home never heard anything so selfish in my life we're always the first ones to leave so are we well we're almost the last tonight said one of the men sleepishly the orchestra left half an hour ago in spite of the wife's agreement that such malevolence was beyond credibility the dispute ended in a short struggle and both whites were lifted kicking into the night as i waited for my hat in the hall the door of the library opened and jordan baker and gatsby came out together he was saying some last words to her but the eagerness in his manner tightened abruptly into formality as several people approached him to say goodbye jordan's party were calling impatiently to her from the porch but she lingered for moan to shake hands i've just heard the most amazing thing she whispered how long were we in there why about half an hour it was simply amazing she repeated abstractly but i swore i wouldn't tell it and here i am tantalizing you she yawned gracefully into my face please come and see me phone book under the name of mrs sigourney howard my aunt she was hurrying off as i talked her brown hand waved a jaunty salute as she melted into the party at the door rather ashamed that my first appearance i had stayed so late i joined the last of gatsby's guests who were clustered around him i wanted to explain that i hunted for him early in the evening and to apologize for not having known him in the garden don't mention it he enjoined me eagerly don't give it another thought support the familiar expression held no more familiarity than the hand which reassuringly brushed my shoulder and don't forget we're going up in the hydroplane tomorrow morning at nine o'clock then the butler behind his shoulder philadelphia wants you on the phone sir alright in a minute tell them i'll be there good night good night good night he smiled and suddenly there seemed to be a pleasant significance in having been among the last to go as if he desired it all the time good night old sport good night but as i walked down the steps i saw the evening was not quite over 50 feet from the door a dozen headlights illuminated a bizarre and tumultuous scene in the ditch besides the road right side up but violently shorn of one wheel rested a new coupe which had left gatsby's drive not two minutes before the sharp jut of the wall accounted for the detachment of the wheel which was now getting considerable attention from half a dozen curious chauffeurs however as they had left their cars blocking the road a harsh discordant din from those in the rear had been audible for some time and added to the already violent confusion of the scene a man in a long dulcer had dismounted from the wreck and now stood in the middle of the road looking from the car to the tire and from the tire to the observers in a pleasant puzzled way see he explained i went in the ditch the fact was infinitely astonishing to him and i recognized first the unusual quality of wonder and then the man it was the late patron of gatsby's library how'd it happen he shrugged his shoulders i know nothing whatever about mechanics he said decisively but how did it happen did you run into the wall don't ask me said allies washing his hands of the whole matter i know very little about driving next to nothing it happened and that's all i know well if you're a poor driver you oughtn't to try driving at night but i wasn't even trying he explained indignantly i wasn't even trying an odd hush fell upon the bystanders do you want to commit suicide you're lucky it was just a wheel a bad driver not even trying you don't understand explain explained the criminal i wasn't driving there's another man in the car the shock that followed this declaration found a voice in a sustained ah as the door of the coupe flung slowly open the crowd it was now a crowd stepped back involuntarily and when the door had opened wide there was a ghostly pause then very gradually part by part a pale dangling individual stepped out of the wreck powering tentatively at the ground with a large uncertain dancing shoe blinded by the glare of the headlights and confused by the incessant groaning of horns the apparition stood swaying for a moment before he perceived the man in the duster why matter he inquired calmly did we run out of gas look half a dozen fingers pointed at the amputated wheel he stared at it for a moment and then looked upwards as though he suspected that it had dropped from the sky it came off someone explained he nodded at first i didn't notice we stopped a pause then taking a long breath and straightening his shoulders he remarked in a determined voice wonder tell me where there's a gas line station at least a dozen men some of them a little better off than he was explained to him that the whaling car were no longer joined by any physical bond back out he suggested after a moment put her in reverse but the wheels off he hesitated no harm in trying he said the cattle walling horns had reached a crescendo and i turned away and cut across the lawn towards home i glanced back once a wafer of her moon was shining over gatsby's house making the night fine as before and surviving the laughter and the sound of his still glowing garden a sudden emptiness seemed to flow now from the windows and the great doors endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host who stood on the porch with his hands up informal gesture farewell reading over what i have written so far i see i have given the impression that the events of three nights several weeks apart were all that absorbed me on the contrary they were merely casual events in a crowded summer and until much later they absorbed me infinitely less than my personal affairs most of the time i worked in the early morning the sun through shadow westward as i hurried down the white chasm of lower new york to the property trust i knew the other clerks and young bond salesmen by their first names and lurched with them in dark crowded restaurants on little pig sausages and mashed potatoes and coffee i even had a short affair with a girl who lived in jersey and worked in the accounting department but her brother began throwing mean looks in my direction so she went on her vacation in july and i let it blow quietly away i took dinner usually at the yale club for some reason it was the gloomiest event of my day and then i went upstairs to the library and studied investments and securities for a contentious hour there were generally a few rioters around but they never came into the library so it was a good place to work after that if the night was mellow i strolled down madison avenue past the old murray hill hotel and over 33rd street to the pennsylvania station i began to like new york the racy adventurous feel of it at night and the satisfaction of that constant flicker of men and women and machines gets to the restless eye i like to walk up fifth avenue and pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few minutes i was going to enter their lives and no one would ever know or disapprove sometimes in my mind i followed them to their apartments on corners of hidden streets and they turned back and smiled at me before they faded through the door into a warm darkness at the enchanted metropolis in twilight i felt a haunting loneliness sometimes and felt it in others poor young clerks who loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for a solitary restaurant dinner young clerks in the dusk waiting for the most poignant moments of night and life again at eight o'clock when the dark lanes of the forties were five deep with throbbing taxi caps bound for their district i felt a sinking in my heart forms leaned together in the taxis as they waited and voices sang and there was laughter from unheard jokes and lighted cigarettes outlined unintelligible gestures inside imagining that i too was hurrying towards gaiety and sharing their intimate excitement i wished them well for a while i lost sight of jordan baker and then in mid-summer i found her again at first i was flattered to go places with her because she was a golf champion and everyone knew her name then it was something more i wasn't exactly in love but i felt a sort of tender curiosity the bored haughty face that she turned towards the world concealed something most affectations conceal something eventually even though they don't in the beginning and one day i found what it was when we were on a house party together up in warwick she left a borrowed car out in the rain with the top down and then lied about it and suddenly i remembered the story about her that had eluded me that night at daisy's at her first big golf tournament there was a row that nearly reached the newspapers a suggestion that she had moved her ball from a bad lie in the semifinal round the thing approached the proportions of a scandal and then died away akaddy had retracted his statement and the only other witness admitted that he might have been mistaken the incident and the name had remained together in my mind jordan baker instinctively avoided clever and true men and now i saw that this was because she felt safer on a plane where any divergence from a coat would be thought impossible she was incurably dishonest and she wasn't able to endure being at a disadvantage and given this unwillingness i suppose she had begun dealing in subterfuges when she was very young in order to keep that cool insolent smile turned to the world and yet satisfy the demands of her hard jaunty body it made no difference to me dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply i was casually sorry and then i forgot it was on that same house party that we had a curious conversation about driving a car it started because she passed so close to some workman that our fender flicked a button on the man's coat you're a rotten driver i protested either you ought to be more careful or you aren't drive at all i am careful no you're not well other people are she said lightly what's that got to do with it they'll keep out of my way she insisted it takes two to make an accident suppose you met somebody just as careless as yourself i hope i never will she answered i hate careless people that's why i like you her gray sunstrained eyes stared straight ahead but she had deliberately shifted our relations for a moment i thought i loved her but i am slow thinking and full of interior rules that act as breaks on my desires and i knew that at first i had to get myself definitely out of that tangle back home i'd been writing letters once a week and signing them love nick and all i could think of was how when that certain girl played tennis a faint mustache of preparation appeared on her upper lip nevertheless there was a vague understanding that had to be tactfully broken off before i was free everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues and this is mine i am one of the few honest people that i have ever known thank you so much for listening if you enjoyed please like comment subscribe share all that jazz the next chapter shall be coming out on the following wednesday um yeah thank you very very much and until next time bye