Читать книгу Великий Гэтсби / The Great Gatsby онлайн

“Here, dear.” She took a waste-basket and pulled out the string of pearls. “Take it downstairs and give it back to him. And tell them that Daisy has changed her mind. Say 'Daisy has changed her mind!'”

She began to cry – she cried and cried. I rushed out and found the maid and we locked the door and got her into a cold bath. She had the letter all the time. She took it into the tub with her and then it came to pieces like snow.

But she didn't say another word. We put ice on her forehead and dressed her 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.

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?” She liked to sit on the sand with his head in her lap looking at him with delight. That was in August. A week after I left Santa Barbara Tom ran into a van on the road one night. 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 spring in Cannes and later in Deauville and then they came back to Chicago. Daisy was popular in Chicago, as you know. Her reputation is absolutely perfect. Perhaps because she doesn't drink. It's a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people. You can hold your tongue.

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. 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 knew. And I connected this Gatsby with the officer in her white automobile.”

When Jordan Baker had finished her story we had left the Plaza. We were driving through Central Park.