But Joe was shrewd and quick-witted, well used to summing up the people with whom she came in contact. She refrained carefully from ‘shocking Aunt Myra’. She had for her something closely akin to a kindly contempt.
‘Your mother,’ she said to Vernon, ‘is very good—but she’s a little stupid too, isn’t she?’
‘She’s very beautiful,’ said Vernon hotly.
‘Yes, she is,’ agreed Joe. ‘All but her hands. Her hair’s lovely. I wish I had red gold hair.’
‘It comes right down below her waist,’ said Vernon.
He found Joe a wonderful companion, quite unlike his previous conception of ‘girls’. She hated dolls, never cried, was as strong if not stronger than he was, and was always ready and willing for any dangerous sport. Together they climbed trees, rode bicycles, fell and cut and bumped themselves, and in the summer holidays took a wasps’ nest together, with a success due more to luck than skill.
To Joe, Vernon could talk and did. She opened up to him a strange new world, a world where people ran away with other people’s husbands and wives, a world of dancing and gambling and cynicism. She had loved her mother with a fierce protective tenderness that almost reversed the roles.
‘She was too soft,’ said Joe. ‘I’m not going to be soft. People are mean to you if you are. Men are beasts anyway, but if you’re a beast to them first, they’re all right. All men are beasts.’
‘That’s a silly thing to say, and I don’t think it’s true.’
‘That’s because you’re going to be a man yourself.’
‘No, it isn’t. And anyway I’m not a beast.’
‘No, but I daresay you will be when you’re grown up.’
‘But, look here, Joe, you’ll have to marry someone some day, and you won’t think your husband a beast.’
‘Why should I marry anyone?’
‘Well—girls do. You don’t want to be an old maid like Miss Crabtree.’
Joe wavered. Miss Crabtree was an elderly spinster who was very active in the village and who was very fond of ‘the dear children’.
‘I shouldn’t be the kind of old maid Miss Crabtree is,’ she said weakly. ‘I should—oh! I should do things. Play the violin, or write books, or paint some marvellous pictures.’
‘I hope you won’t play the violin,’ said Vernon.
‘That’s really what I should like to do best. Why do you hate music so, Vernon?’
‘I don’t know. I just do. It makes me feel all horrible inside.’
‘How queer. It gives me a nice feeling. What are you going to do when you grow up?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I’d like to marry someone very beautiful and live at Abbots Puissants and have lots of horses and dogs.’
‘How dull,’ said Joe. ‘I don’t think that would be exciting a bit.’
‘I don’t know that I want things to be very exciting,’ said Vernon.
‘I do,’ said Joe. ‘I want things to be exciting the whole time without ever stopping.’
Joe and Vernon had few other children to play with. The Vicar, whose children Vernon had played with when he was younger, had gone to another living, and his successor was unmarried. Most of the children of families in the same position as the Deyres lived too far away for more than a very occasional visit.
The only exception was Nell Vereker. Her father, Captain Vereker, was agent to Lord Coomberleigh. He was a tall stooping man, with very pale blue eyes and a hesitating manner. He had good connections but was inefficient generally. His wife made up in efficiency for what he lacked. She was a tall commanding woman, still handsome. Her hair was very golden and her eyes were very blue. She had pushed her husband into the position he held, and in the same way she pushed herself into the best houses of the neighbourhood. She had birth, but like her husband, no money. Yet she was determined to make a success of life.
Both Vernon and Joe were bored to death by Nell Vereker. She was a thin pale child with fair straggly hair. Her eyelids and the tip of her nose were faintly tinged with pink. She was no good at anything. She couldn’t run and she couldn’t climb. She was always dressed in starched white muslin and her favourite games were dolls’ tea-parties.
Myra was very fond of Nell. ‘Such a thorough little lady,’ she used to say. Vernon and Joe were kindly and polite when Mrs Vereker brought Nell to tea. They tried to think of games she would like, and they used to give whoops of delight when at last she departed, sitting up very straight beside her mother in the hired carriage.
It was in Vernon’s second holidays, just after the famous episode of the wasps’ nest that the first rumours came about Deerfields.
Deerfields was the property adjoining Abbots Puissants. It belonged to old Sir Charles Alington. Some friends of Mrs Deyre’s came to lunch and the subject came up for discussion.
‘It’s quite true. I had it from an absolutely authentic source. It’s been sold to these people. Yes—Jews. Oh, of course—enormously wealthy. Yes, a fancy price, I believe. Levinne, the name is. No, Russian Jews, so I heard. Oh, of course quite impossible. Too bad of Sir Charles, I say. Yes, of course, there’s the Yorkshire property as well and I hear he’s lost a lot of money lately. No, no one will call. Naturally.’
Joe and Vernon were pleasurably excited. All titbits about Deerfields were carefully stored up. At last the strangers arrived and moved in. There was more talk of the same kind.
‘Oh, absolutely impossible, Mrs Deyre … Just as we thought … One wonders what they think they are doing … What do they expect? … I daresay they’ll sell the place and move away. Yes, there is a family. A boy. About your Vernon’s age, I believe …’
‘I wonder what Jews are like,’ said Vernon to Joe. ‘Why does everyone dislike them? We thought one boy at school was a Jew, but he eats bacon for breakfast, so he can’t be.’
The Levinnes proved to be a very Christian brand of Jew. They appeared in church on Sunday, having taken a whole pew. The interest of the congregation was breathless. First came Mr Levinne—very round and stout, tightly frock-coated—an enormous nose and a shining face. Then Mrs—an amazing sight. Colossal sleeves! Hour glass figure! Chains of diamonds! An immense hat decorated with feathers and black tightly curling ringlets underneath it. With them was a boy rather taller than Vernon with a long yellow face, and protruding ears.
A carriage and pair was waiting for them when service was over. They got into it and drove away.
‘Well!’ said Miss Crabtree.
Little groups formed, talking busily.
‘I think it’s rotten,’ said Joe.
She and Vernon were in the garden together.
‘What’s rotten?’
‘Those people.’
‘Do you mean the Levinnes?’
‘Yes. Why should everyone be so horrid about them?’
‘Well,’ said Vernon, trying to be strictly impartial, ‘they did look queer, you know.’
‘Well, I think people are beasts.’
Vernon was silent. Joe, a rebel by force of circumstances, was always putting a new point of view before him.
‘That boy,’ continued Joe. ‘I daresay he’s awfully jolly, even though his ears do stick out.’
‘I wonder,’ said Vernon. ‘It would be jolly to have someone else. Kate says