tiptoe-ing on the porch

 

----------------------- [excerpt from The Great Gatsby] ------------------ "She'll be all right to-morrow," he said presently.  "I'm just going to wait here and see if he tries to bother her about that unpleasantness this afternoon.  She's locked herself into her room, and if he tries any brutality she's going to turn the light out and on again."

"He won't touch her," I said.  "He's not thinking about her."

"I don't trust him, old sport."

"How long are you going to wait?"

"All night, if necessary.  Anyhow, till they all go to bed."

A new point of view occurred to me.  Suppose Tom found out that Daisy had been driving.  He might think he saw a connection in it - he might think anything.  I looked at the house; there were two or three bright windows down-stairs and the pink glow from Daisy's room on the second floor.

"You wait here," I said.  "I'll see if there's any sign of a commotion."

I walked back along the border of the lawn, traversed the gravel softly, and tiptoed up the veranda steps.  The drawing room curtains were open, and I saw that the room was empty.  Crossing the porch where we had dined that June night three months before, I came to a small rectangle of light which I guessed was the pantry window.  The blind was drawn, but I found a rift at the sill.

Daisy and Tom were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table, with a plate of cold fried chicken between them, and two bottles of ale.  He was talking intently across the table at her, and in his earnestness his hand had fallen upon and covered her own.  Once in a while she looked up at him and nodded in agreement.

They weren't happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or the ale - and yet they weren't unhappy either.  There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture, and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together.

As I tiptoed from the porch I heard my taxi feeling its way along the dark road toward the house.  Gatsby was waiting where I had left him in the drive.

"Is it all quiet up there?" he asked anxiously.

"Yes, it's all quiet."  I hesitated.  "You'd better come home and get some sleep."

He shook his head.

"I want to wait here till Daisy goes to bed.  Good night, old sport."

He put his hands in his coat pockets and turned back eagerly to his scrutiny of the house, as though my presence marred the sacredness of the vigil.  So I walked away and left him standing there in the moonlight - watching over nothing.

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{The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Charles Scribner's Sons - 1925}

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