Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had beenone of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven--anational figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute lim-ited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anticli-max. His family were enormously wealthy--even in college his freedomwith money was a matter for reproach--but now he'd left Chicago andcome East in a fashion that rather took your breath away; for instance,he'd brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hardto realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to dothat.
Why they came East I don't know. They had spent a year in Francefor no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfullywherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a perma-nent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn't believe it--I hadno sight into Daisy's heart but I felt that Tom would drift on forever, see-king a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverablefootball game.
And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to EastEgg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house waseven more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red and white GeorgianColonial mansion, overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beachand ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens--finally when it reached thehouse drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentumof its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowingnow with reflected gold and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, andTom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on thefront porch.
He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy,straw-haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a superciliousmanner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over hisface and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively for-ward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide theenormous power of that body--he seemed to fill those glistening bootsuntil he strained the top lacing and you could see a great pack of muscleshifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body ca-pable of enormous leverage--a cruel body.
His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression offractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it,even toward people he liked--and there were men at New Haven whohad hated his guts.
"Now, don't think my opinion on these matters is final, "he seemed tosay,"just because I'm stronger and more of a man than you are. "Wewere in the same senior society, and while we were never intimate I al-ways had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to likehim with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.
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