‘artistic game’ and I gathered later that he was a photographer and had made the dim enlargement of Mrs. Wilson’s mother which hovered like an ectoplasm on the wall. His wife was shrill, languid, handsome and horrible. She told me with pride that her husband had photographed her a hundred and twenty-seven times since they had been married.
Mrs. Wilson had changed her costume some time before and was now attired in an elaborate afternoon dress of cream colored chiffon, which gave out a continual rustle as she swept about the room. With the influence of the dress her personality had also undergone a change. The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was con-verted into impressive hauteur. Her laughter, her gestures, her assertions became more violently affected moment by moment and as she expanded the room grew smaller around her until she seemed to be revolving on a noisy, creaking pivot through the smoky air.
‘My dear,’ she told her sister in a high mincing shout,
‘most of these fellas will cheat you every time. All they think of is money. I had a woman up here last week to look at my feet and when she gave me the bill you’d of thought she had my appendicitus out.’
‘What was the name of the woman?’ asked Mrs. McKee.
‘Mrs. Eberhardt. She goes around looking at people’s feet in their own homes.’
The Great Gatsby
‘I like your dress,’ remarked Mrs. McKee, ‘I think it’s adorable.’
Mrs. Wilson rejected the compliment by raising her eyebrow in disdain.
‘It’s just a crazy old thing,’ she said. ‘I just slip it on sometimes when I don’t care what I look like.’
‘But it looks wonderful on you, if you know what I mean,’
pursued Mrs. McKee. ‘If Chester could only get you in that pose I think he could make something of it.’
We all looked in silence at Mrs. Wilson who removed a strand of hair from over her eyes and looked back at us with a brilliant smile. Mr. McKee regarded her intently with his head on one side and then moved his hand back and forth slowly in front of his face.
‘I should change the light,’ he said after a moment. ‘I’d like to bring out the modelling of the features. And I’d try to get hold of all the back hair.’
‘I wouldn’t think of changing the light,’ cried Mrs. McKee. ‘I think it’s——‘
Her husband said ‘SH!’ and we all looked at the subject again whereupon Tom Buchanan yawned audibly and got to his feet.
‘You McKees have something to drink,’ he said. ‘Get some more ice and mineral water, Myrtle, before everybody goes to sleep.’
‘I told that boy about the ice.’ Myrtle raised her eyebrows in despair at the shiftlessness of the lower orders. ‘These people! You have to keep after them all the time.’
She looked at me and laughed pointlessly. Then she Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com
flounced over to the dog, kissed it with ecstasy and swept into the kitchen, implying that a dozen chefs awaited her orders there.
‘I’ve done some nice things out on Long Island,’ asserted Mr. McKee.
Tom looked at him blankly.
‘Two of them we have framed downstairs.’
‘Two what?’ demanded Tom.
‘Two studies. One of them I call ‘Montauk Point—the Gulls,’ and the other I call ‘Montauk Point—the Sea.’ ‘
The sister Catherine sat down beside me on the couch.
‘Do you live down on Long Island, too?’ she inquired.
‘I live at West Egg.’
‘Really? I was down there at a party about a month ago.
At a man named Gatsby’s. Do you know him?’
‘I live next door to him.’
‘Well, they say he’s a nephew or a cousin of Kaiser Wil-helm’s. That’s where all his money comes from.’
‘Really?’
She nodded.
‘I’m scared of him. I’d hate to have him get anything on me.’This absorbing information about my neighbor was interrupted by Mrs. McKee’s pointing suddenly at Catherine:
‘Chester, I think you could do something with HER,’ she broke out, but Mr. McKee only nodded in a bored way and turned his attention to Tom.
‘I’d like to do more work on Long Island if I could get the entry. All I ask is that they should give me a start.’
The Great Gatsby
‘Ask Myrtle,’ said Tom, breaking into a short shout of laughter as Mrs. Wilson entered with a tray. ‘She’ll give you a letter of introduction, won’t you, Myrtle?’
‘Do what?’ she asked, startled.
