Chapter four 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 lady's moving somewhere between his cocktails and his flowers one time he killed a man who had found out that he was a 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 house that summer it is an old time table now disintegrating at its folds and headed this schedule in effect July 5th 1922 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 and paid him the subtle tribute of knowing nothing whatever about him from East Egg then came the Chester Becker's and the leeches and a man named Bunsen whom I knew at Yale and dr. Webster Civet who was drowned last summer up in Maine and the horn beams and the Willie Voltaire's and a whole clan named Black Buck who always gathered in a corner and flipped up their noses like goats said whosoever came near and the east maze and the Christie's or rather Hubert Auerbach and mr. Christie's wife Ann edgar beaver whose hair they say turned cotton white one winter afternoon for no good reason at all Claire's on dive was from East Egg as I remember he came only once in white knickerbockers and had a fight with a bum named Eddie in the garden from farther out on the island came the Cheadle's and the ORP Schrader's and Stonewall Jackson Abrams of Georgia and the fish guards and the Ripley Snell's Snell was there three days before he went to the penitentiary so drunk out on the gravel drive that mrs. Ulysses sweats automobile ran over his right hand the dancies came to an SB whitebait who was well over sixty and Maurice safe link and the hammerheads and Beluga the tobacco importer and belugas girls from West Egg came the poles and the mole Reddy's in Cecil Roebuck and Cecil shown and Gillick the state senator and Newton orchid who controlled films par excellence and Eckhouse tan Kline coenen Donna Schwartz ax the Sun and Arthur McCarty all connected with the movies in one way or another and the cat lips and the Bamberg's and giiirl Muldoon brother to that Muldoon who afterwards strangled his wife da Fontenot the promoter came there and adla grow and james b rotgut ferret and the DeYoung's and ernest lily they came to gamble and when ferret wandered into the garden it meant he was cleaned out an associate attraction would have to fluctuate profitability next day a man named klipspringer was there so often in so long and it became known as the border i doubt if he had any other home of theatrical people there were dust ways and horace O'Donovan and lester meyer george duckweed and frances bull also from New York where the Chrome's and the back Ison's and the denickers and Russel Betty in the Corrigan's and the Kelleher's and Dewar's and Scully's and SW Belcher and the smirks and young Quinn's divorced now and Henry L palmetto who killed himself by jumping in front of a subway train at Times Square Benny McClanahan arrived always with four girls they were never quite the same ones and physical person but they were so identical one with another that it inevitably seemed that they had been there before I forgotten their names Jacqueline I think girls Consuelo Gloria or Judy or June and their last names rather the melodious names of flowers and months or the sterner ones of the great American capitalists whose cousins if pressed they would confess themselves to be in addition to all these I can remember that Faustina O Brien came here at least once and the bedico girls and young Brewer who had his no shot off in the war and mr. all Brooks burger and miss Haig fiance Rd de Fritz Peters and mr. P Jewett once head of the American Legion and miss Claudia hip with a man reputed to be her chauffeur and the prince of something whom we call 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 July Gatsby's gorgeous car lurched up the rocky drive to my door and gave out a burst of melody 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 having lunch with me today and I thought we 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 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 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 and it's monstrous length with triumphant hat boxes supper boxes and toolboxes and terraced with a labyrinth of windshields that mirrored dozens sons sitting down behind many layers of glass and a sort of green leather conservatory we started to town I had talked with him perhaps six 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 it gradually faded and he had become simply the proprietor of an elaborate Roadhouse next door and then came that disconcerning ride we hadn't reached Westec village before Gatsby began leaving his elegant sentences unfinished and slapping himself indecisively on the knee of his caramel colored suit lookee 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 gonna tell you something about my life he interrupted I don't want you to get a wrong idea of me from 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 was brought up in America but educated at Oxford because all my ancestors had 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 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 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 collecting jewels chiefly rubies hunting big game painting a little things were myself only and trying to forget something very sad that it happened to me long ago with an effort I managed to restrain my incredulous laughter the very phrases were worn so threadbare that they evoke no image except 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 took two machine-gun detachments so far forward that there was half a 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 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 'he's troubled history and sympathized with the brave struggles of the Montenegrin people it appreciated fully the chain of national circumstances which had elicited its tribute from Montenegro Swarm little heart by in credulity was submerged in fascination now it was like skimming hastily through a dozen magazines he reached into 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 Dida nello ran the circular Legend Montenegro Nicholas Rex turn it major Jay Gatsby I read for valor extraordinary here's another thing I always carry a souvenir of Oxford days it was taken in Trinity quad the man of my left is now the Earl of Doncaster it was a photograph of half-a-dozen young men in Blazers loafing in an archway through which were visible 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 knowings of his broken heart I'm going to make a big request of you today 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 at lunch no this afternoon I happened 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 matter was but I was more annoyed than interested I hadn't asked Jordan to tea in order to discuss mr. Jay 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 alone he wouldn't say another word his correctness grew on him as we neared the city we passport Rozsival where there was a glimpse of red belted ocean-going ships and sped along a cobbled slum lined with dark undeserved saloons of the faded gilt 1900s then the Valley of Ashes opened out on both sides of us and I had a glimpse of mrs. Wilson straining at the garage pump with panting vitality as we went by with fenders spread like wings we scattered light through half Astoria only have four as we twisted among the pillars of the elevated I heard the familiar chug chug spat of a motorcycle and a frantic policeman rode alongside alright 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 tipping his cap no you next time mr. Gatsby excuse me what was that I inquired the picture of Oxford I was able to do the Commissioner 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 the city seen from Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time in his 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 Trond blinds and by more cheerful carriages for friends the friends looked out at us with the tragic eyes and short upper lips of southeastern Europe and I was glad that the site of Gatsby's splendid car was included in their somber holiday as we cross Blackwell's Island to limousine past us Jevon by a white chauffeur and which sat three modest Negroes two bucks and a girl I laughed aloud as the yolks of their eyeballs rolled toward us and haughty rivalry anything can happen now that we slid over this bridge I thought anything at all even Gatsby could happen without any particular wonder roaring noon in a well fan 42nd Street cellar I met Gatsby for lunch blinking away the brightness of a street outside my eyes picked him out obscurely in the anteroom talking to another man mr. Carraway this is my friend mr. wolf shine a small flat nose Jew raised his large head and regarded me with two fine rows of hair which luxury ated in either nostril after a moment I discovered his tiny eyes in the half darkness so I took one look at him said Mr Wolfsheim shaking my hand earnestly and what do you think I did what I inquired politely but evidently he was not addressing me for he dropped my hand and covered Gatsby with his expressive nose I handed the money to cat's paw and I said alright cat's paw don't pay him a penny till he shuts his mouth he shot it down in there Gatsby took an arm of each of us and move forward into the restaurant whereupon mr. Wolfsheim swallowed a new sentence he was starting and lapsed into a son ambulatory abstraction highballs asked the head waiter there's a nice restaurant here said mr. wolf shot looking at the presbyterian nymphs on the ceiling but i like across the street better yes highballs agreed Gatsby and then to mr. wolf shot it's too hot over there hon small yes mr. wolf shot but full of memories what place is that I asked the old Metropole the old Metropole Prudie Wolfsheim gloomily though would face his dead and gone filled with friends gone now forever I can't forget so long as I lived the night they shot Rosie Rosenthal there it was six of us at the table and Rosie had eaten drunk a lot all evening when it was almost the morning the waiter came up to him with a funny look and said somebody wants to speak to him outside all right says Rosie and begins to get up and I pulled him down in his chair let the bastards come in here if they want you Rosie 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 the blinds we'd have seen daylight did he go I asked innocently sherry went mr. wolf Shyam's nose flashed at me indignant Lee he turned around in the door and says don't let the way to take away my coffee and then he went out on the sidewalk and they shot him three times in his full belly and drove away for them were electrocuted I said remember five with Becca 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 mr. Wolfsheim seemed disappointed this is just a friend I told you we talked about that some other time I beg your pardon said mr. wolf shot I had a wrong man a succulent hash arrived and mr. Wolfsheim forgetting the more sentimental atmosphere of the old Metropole began to eat with ferocious delicacy his eyes meanwhile roved very slowly all around the room he completed the arc 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 cats be painting toward me I'm afraid I made you a little angry this morning in the car there was a 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 underhand he assured me miss Baker is a great sports woman you know and she'd never do anything that wasn't alright suddenly he looked at his watch jumped up and hurried from the room leaving me with mr. Woolf shot him at the table he asked the telephone said mr. Wolfsheim following in with his eyes fine fellow isn't he handsome to look at in 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 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 know I 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 he paused I see you 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 molars he informed me well I inspected them that's a very interesting idea yeah he flipped his sleeves up under his coat yeah 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 mr. Wolfsheim drank his coffee with a jerk 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 Meyer said Gatsby without enthusiasm mr. Wolfsheim raised his hand in a sort of benediction you're very polite but I belong to another generation he announced solemnly you sit here we discuss you sports and you young ladies in Europe he supplied an imaginary noun 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 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 some explain cat speak this is one of his sentimental days he's quite a character around New York a den is in a broad way who is he anyhow an actor no 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 1919 fix the World Series I repeated the idea staggered me I remembered of course that the World Series had been fixed in 1919 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 the faith of 50 million people with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe how did he happen to do that 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 for a minute I said I've got to say hello to someone when he saw us Tom jumped up and took half a dozen steps in our direction where have you been he demanded eagerly Daisy's furious because you hadn't called up this is mr. Gatsby mr. Buchanan they 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 mr. Gatsby I turned toward mr. Gatsby but he was no longer there one October day in 1917 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 loans because I had on shoes from England with rubber knobs on the soles that bit into the soft ground I had a new plaid skirt also that blue 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 tut-tut-tut-tut in a disapproving way the largest of the banners and the largest of the loans belonged to Daisy phase house she was just 18 two years older than me and by far the most popular of all the young girls in Louisville she dressed in white and add a little white roadster and all day long the telephone rang in her house and excited young officers from Camp Taylor demanded the privilege 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 5 feet away hello Jordan she called unexpectedly 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 a way that every young girl wants to be looked at at some time and because it seemed romantic to me I've 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've met him on Long Island I didn't realize it was the same man that was 1917 by the next year I had a few Bois 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 anyone at all wild rumors were circulating about her how her mother had found her packing her bag one winter night to go to New York and say goodbye 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 anymore but only with a few flat-footed short-sighted young men in town who couldn't get into the army at all 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 down with a hundred people in for private cars and hired a whole floor of the Seelbach hotel and the day before the wedding he gave her a string of pearls valued at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars I was a bridesmaid I came into her room half an hour before the bridal dinner and found her lying on her bed as lovely as the June night in her flowered dress and as drunk as a monkey she had a bottle of Sauternes in one hand and a letter in the other graduate me she muttered never had a drink before but oh how I do enjoy it what's the matter Daisy I was scared I can tell you I've never seen a girl like that before here dares she groped around in the wastebasket she had with her on her bed and pulled out the string of pearls take him downstairs and give him back - ever they belonged to tell him all daisies chain her mine say daisies change her 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 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 in the incident was over next day at five o'clock she married Tom Buchanan without 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 where the most abstracted expression until she saw him coming in the door 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 at I left Santa Barbara Tom ran into a wagon on the Ventura road one night and ripped a front wheel off his car the girl who was with him got into the papers - 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 spring and can and later in doe View and then they came back to Chicago to settle down Daisy was popular in Chicago as you know they moved to the 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 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 em or at all and yet there's something in that voice of hers well 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 he'd 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 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 we're driving into Victoria through Central Park the Sun had gone down behind the tall apartments of the movie stars in the West 50s and the clear voices of little girls already gathered like crickets on the grass rose through the hot Twilight I'm the Sheik 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 at all why not Gatsby bought that house 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 to know continue Jordan if you'll invite Daisy to your house some afternoon then let him come over the modesty of the demand shook me he had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths so that he could come over some afternoon 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 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 when 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 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 suggested 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 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 said 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 Jordans golden shoulder and drew her toward me and asked her to dinner suddenly I wasn't thinking of Daisy and Gatsby anymore but of this clean hard limited person who dealt in universal skepticism who leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my arm a phrase began to beat my ear to the sort of heady excitement there are only the pursued the pursuing the busy and the tired and Daisy ought to have something in her life murmurs 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 a barrier of dark trees and then the facade of 59th 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 wand scornful mouth smiled and so I drew her up again closer this time to my face