There was a moment of silence. The telephone book slipped from its nail and splashed to the floor, whereupon Jordan whispered ‘Excuse me’—but this time no one laughed.

‘I’ll pick it up,’ I offered.

‘I’ve got it.’ Gatsby examined the parted string, muttered ‘Hum!’ in an interested way, and tossed the book on a chair.

‘That’s a great expression of yours, isn’t it?’ said Tom sharply.

‘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 make personal remarks I won’t stay here a minute. Call up and order some ice for the mint julep.’

As Tom took up the receiver the compressed heat exploded into sound and we were listening to the portentous chords of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March from the ball-Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com

1

room below.

‘Imagine marrying anybody in this heat!’ cried Jordan dismally.

‘Still—I was married in the middle of June,’ Daisy remembered, ‘Louisville in June! Somebody fainted. Who was it fainted, Tom?’

‘Biloxi,’ he answered shortly.

‘A man named Biloxi. ‘Blocks’ Biloxi, and he made boxes—that’s a fact—and he was from Biloxi, Tennessee.’

‘They carried him into my house,’ appended Jordan,

‘because we lived just two doors from the church. And he stayed three weeks, until Daddy told him he had to get out.

The day after he left Daddy died.’ After a moment she added as if she might have sounded irreverent, ‘There wasn’t any connection.’

‘I used to know a Bill Biloxi from Memphis,’ I remarked.

‘That was his cousin. I knew his whole family history before he left. He gave me an aluminum putter that I use today.’

The music had died down as the ceremony began and now a long cheer floated in at the window, followed by in-termittent cries of ‘Yea—ea—ea!’ and finally by a burst of jazz as the dancing began.

‘We’re getting old,’ said Daisy. ‘If we were young we’d rise and dance.’

‘Remember Biloxi,’ Jordan warned her. ‘Where’d you know him, Tom?’

‘Biloxi?’ He concentrated with an effort. ‘I didn’t know 1

The Great Gatsby

him. He was a friend of Daisy’s.’

‘He was not,’ she denied. ‘I’d never seen him before. He came down in the private car.’

‘Well, he said he knew you. He said he was raised in Louisville. Asa Bird brought him around at the last minute and asked if we had room for him.’

Jordan smiled.

‘He was probably bumming his way home. He told me he was president of your class at Yale.’

Tom and I looked at each other blankly.

‘BilOxi?’

‘First place, we didn’t have any president——‘

Gatsby’s foot beat a short, restless tattoo and Tom eyed him suddenly.

‘By the way, Mr. Gatsby, I understand you’re an Oxford man.’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Oh, yes, I understand you went to Oxford.’

‘Yes—I went there.’

A pause. Then Tom’s voice, incredulous and insulting:

‘You must have gone there about the time Biloxi went to New Haven.’

Another pause. A waiter knocked and came in with crushed mint and ice but the silence was unbroken by his

‘Thank you’ and the soft closing of the door. This tremendous detail was to be cleared up at last.

‘I told you I went there,’ said Gatsby.

‘I heard you, but I’d like to know when.’

‘It was in nineteen-nineteen, I only stayed five months.

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1

That’s why I can’t really call myself an Oxford man.’

Tom glanced around to see if we mirrored his unbelief.

But we were all looking at Gatsby.

‘It was an opportunity they gave to some of the officers after the Armistice,’ he continued. ‘We could go to any of the universities in England or France.’