Jeremy | Page 4

I
THE BIRTHDAY
I
About thirty years ago there was at the top of the right-hand side of
Orange Street, in Polchester, a large stone house. I say "was"; the shell
of it is still there, and the people who now live in it are quite unaware, I
suppose, that anything has happened to the inside of it, except that they
are certainly assured that their furniture is vastly superior to the
furniture of their predecessors. They have a gramophone, a pianola, and
a lift to bring the plates from the kitchen into the dining-room, and a
small motor garage at the back where the old pump used to be, and a
very modern rock garden where once was the pond with the fountain
that never worked. Let them cherish their satisfaction. No one grudges
it to them. The Coles were, by modern standards, old-fashioned people,
and the Stone House was an old-fashioned house.
Young Jeremy Cole was born there in the year 1884, very early in the
morning of December 8th. He was still there very early in the morning
of December 8th, 1892. He was sitting up in bed. The cuckoo clock had
just struck five, and he was aware that he was, at this very moment, for
the first time in his life, eight years old. He had gone to bed at eight
o'clock on the preceding evening with the choking consciousness that
he would awake in the morning a different creature. Although he had
slept, there had permeated the texture of his dreams that same choking
excitement, and now, wide awake, as though he had asked the cuckoo
to call him in order that he might not be late for the great occasion, he

stared into the black distance of his bedroom and reflected, with a
beating heart, upon the great event. He was eight years old, and he had
as much right now to the nursery arm-chair with a hole in it as Helen
had.
That was his first definite realisation of approaching triumph.
Throughout the whole of his seventh year he had fought with Helen,
who was most unjustly a year older than he and persistently proud of
that injustice, as to his right to use the wicker arm-chair whensoever it
pleased him. So destructive of the general peace of the house had these
incessant battles been, so unavailing the suggestions of elderly relations
that gentlemen always yielded to ladies, that a compromise had been
arrived at. When Jeremy was eight he should have equal rights with
Helen. Well and good. Jeremy had yielded to that. It was the only
decent chair in the nursery. Into the place where the wicker, yielding to
rude and impulsive pressure, had fallen away, one's body might be
most happily fitted. It was of exactly the right height; it made the
handsomest creaking noises when one rocked in it--and, in any case,
Helen was only a girl.
But the sense of his triumph had not yet fully descended upon him. As
he sat up in bed, yawning, with a tickle in the middle of his back and
his throat very dry; he was disappointingly aware that he was still the
same Jeremy of yesterday. He did not know what it was exactly that he
had expected, but he did not feel at present that confident proud glory
for which he had been prepared. Perhaps it was too early.
He turned round, curled his head into his arm, and with a half- muttered,
half-dreamt statement about the wicker chair, he was once again asleep.

II
He awoke to the customary sound of the bath water running into the
bath. His room was flooded with sunshine, and old Jampot, the nurse
(her name was Mrs. Preston and her shape was Jampot), was saying as
usual: "Now, Master Jeremy, eight o'clock; no lying in bed--out--you

get--bath--ready."
He stared at her, blinking.
"You should say 'Many Happy Returns of the Day, Master Jeremy,'" he
remarked. Then suddenly, with a leap, he was out of bed, had crossed
the floor, pushed back the nursery door, and was sitting in the wicker
arm-chair, his naked feet kicking a triumphant dance.
"Helen! Helen!" he called. "I'm in the chair."
No sound.
"I'm eight," he shouted, "and I'm in the chair."
Mrs. Preston, breathless and exclaiming, hurried across to him.
"Oh, you naughty boy . . . death of cold . . . in your nightshirt."
"I'm eight," he said, looking at her scornfully, "and I can sit here as
long as I please."
Helen, her pigtails flapping on either shoulder, her nose red, as it
always was early in the morning, appeared at the opposite end of the
nursery.
"Nurse, he mustn't, must he? Tell him not to. I don't care how old you
are. It's