グレート・ギャッツビー 第四章-17

グレート・ギャッツビー　第四章-17

「次の年の秋には、彼女はいつもの陽気さを取り戻してた。前より明るくなったかも。休戦後に社交界デビューして、2月にはニューオリンズの男性と婚約してたと思う。6月にはシカゴのトム・ブキャナンと結婚して、ルイスビルは今までにないほどの大騒ぎだったわ。列車4両貸し切りにしてシカゴから100人連れてきて、シールバッハホテルの一階を貸し切って、挙式の前日には35万ドルもする真珠のネックレスを彼女にプレゼントしたの。

　わたしはブライズメイドになったわ。披露宴の30分前に部屋に入ると、彼女は花柄のドレスを着て6月の夜のように美しかったのに、べろんべろんに酔っ払ってベッドの上に寝てたの。片手にソーテルヌのワインボトルを持って、もう片方には手紙を持ってた。

『お祝いしてよ』ってぶつぶつ言うの。

『飲んだことなかったのに楽しくなってきたわ』

『どうしたの デイジー？』

　怖かったわ。あんな子を見たの初めてだったから。

『これあげる』

　彼女はベッドに引き入れたゴミ箱を漁って、真珠のネックレスを引き出した。

『下に持って行って、持ち主さんに返してあげて 。デイジーは心変わりした！デイジーは心変わりしたってちゃんと伝えてきてちょうだい！』

　彼女は激しく泣き出したの。泣いて泣いて泣きわめくんで、わたしは急いで外に出て、彼女の母親付きのメイドを見つけてきたわ。ドアに鍵をかけて彼女を冷たいお風呂に入れてあげた。彼女は手紙を放そうとしなかったの。それをバスタブまで持ってきて、濡れたのを固くしぼってボールにして、それが雪のようにバラバラになってようやく放したんで、わたしが石鹸皿に入れてあげたの。

　でも、彼女はそれ以上何も言わなかった。アンモニア水を気付け薬にして、頭を氷で冷やし、服を着せて、30分後に部屋から出る時には、真珠が首にちゃんと巻かれててて一件落着。翌日の5時には、けろっとしてトム・ブキャナンと式を挙げて、3ヶ月間の南洋の旅に出かけたわけ。

　彼らが新婚旅行から戻ってから、サンタバーバラで見かけたわ。あんなに夫にゾッコンになる女の子なんてなかったわよ。

　彼が部屋からちょっと出ようものなら、不安そうに辺りを見回して『トムはどこ』って、彼が帰ってくるまですごく頼りない顔をしてるんだもの。砂の上に座って、膝枕を小一時間もしてやりながら、彼のまぶたを指でなでて、うれしくってたまらないって感じで見つめてたこともあったわね。２人が一緒にいるのを見るのはちょっと感動的だったわよ。素直に感動して、思わず微笑んでしまうって感じ。それが８月のことだった。わたしがサンタバーバラを発って１週間後のある晩、トムはベントゥラの道で馬車にぶつかって、車の前輪が取れちゃったの。彼と一緒にいた女の子も腕を骨折して新聞に載ってしまったわ。サンタバーバラのホテルの客室係をしてる娘だった。

　翌年の春、デイジーは女の子を産み、1年間フランスに行ったわ。春にカンヌに行った時と、後でドーヴィルに行ったとき彼らに会ったんだけど、その後、彼らはシカゴに戻って落ち着いたの。聞いてるようにデイジーはシカゴでは人気者だったのよ。若くて金持ちで派手な人ばかりだったけど、その中で彼女の評判はとても良かった。お酒を飲まないからでしょうね。酔っぱらいの中にいれば、飲まないと徳ね。自分の言葉に気をつけることができるし、それに、しくじっても、時間をかせいで誰も気にしないか、気づかせないようにすることもできるし。たぶんデイジーは浮気なんかしなかったと思うけど、なんてったってあの声だから. . .

　６週間ほど前、彼女は久しぶりにギャッツビーの名前を聞いたのよ。ウエストエッグに住んでるなら、ギャッツビーを知ってるかって、わたし、あなたに聞いたでしょ。あなたが帰った後、彼女がわたしの部屋に入ってきて、わたしを起こしたの 。『ギャッツビーって誰？』って聞いてきて。わたしが半分寝ぼけたまま彼のことを教えてあげると、彼女の声がひっくり返って、あの人だわって言ったの。それであのギャッツビーが彼女の白い車に乗ってた将校だってわかったの」

By the next autumn she was gay again, gay as ever. She had a debut after the Armistice, and in February she was presumably engaged to a man from New Orleans. In June she married Tom Buchanan of Chicago with more pomp and circumstance than Louisville ever knew before. He came down with a hundred people in four private cars and hired a whole floor of the Seelbach Hotel, and the day before the wedding he gave her a string of pearls valued at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

I was bridesmaid. I came into her room half an hour before the bridal dinner, and found her lying on her bed as lovely as the June night in her flowered dress--and as drunk as a monkey. She had a bottle of sauterne in one hand and a letter in the other.

" 'Gratulate me," she muttered. "Never had a drink before but oh, how I do enjoy it."

"What's the matter, Daisy?"

I was scared, I can tell you; I'd never seen a girl like that before.

"Here, dearis." She groped around in a waste-basket she had with her on the bed and pulled out the string of pearls. "Take 'em downstairs and give 'em back to whoever they belong to. Tell 'em all Daisy's change' her mine. Say 'Daisy's change' her mine!'."

She began to cry--she cried and cried. I rushed out and found her mother's maid and we locked the door and got her into a cold bath. She wouldn't let go of the letter. She took it into the tub with her and squeezed it up into a wet ball, and only let me leave it in the soap dish when she saw that it was coming to pieces like snow.

But she didn't say another word. We gave her spirits of ammonia and put ice on her forehead and hooked her back into her dress 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 without so much as a shiver and started off on a three months' trip to the South Seas.

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?" and wear the most abstracted expression until she saw him coming in the door. She used to sit on the sand with his head in her lap by the hour rubbing her fingers over his eyes and looking at him with unfathomable delight. It was touching to see them together--it made you laugh in a hushed, fascinated way. That was in August. A week after I left Santa Barbara Tom ran into a wagon on the Ventura road one night and ripped a front wheel off his car. 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 to settle down. Daisy was popular in Chicago, as you know. They moved with a fast crowd, all of them young and rich and wild, but she came out with an absolutely perfect reputation. Perhaps because she doesn't drink. It's a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people. You can hold your tongue and, moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don't see or care. Perhaps Daisy never went in for amour at all--and yet there's something in that voice of hers. . . .

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 in West Egg. 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 used to know. It wasn't until then that I connected this Gatsby with the officer in her white car.