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Authors: Madeleine L'engle

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BOOK: The Joys of Love
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And then she consoled herself: But of course he had to laugh.
Especially
if it was important.
The music came thin and delicate as a spider's web from the recorders. As Elizabeth sat there she remembered a conversation she had had with her Aunt Harriet shortly after her father's death.
 
Elizabeth had been sitting in a corner of the cluttered attic in Jordan pretending with half her mind to be Jo in
Little Women
in
order to stop weeping over a packet of her father's letters she had taken up with her to read, when Aunt Harriet called her downstairs. Elizabeth blew her nose and went down the dark attic steps and into the small upstairs sitting room where Aunt Harriet was at her desk working on accounts.
“Elizabeth,” Aunt Harriet had said, tapping her pen lightly on the desk and not looking up from her account book.
“Yes, Aunt Harriet?”
“It has come to my attention that most young girls are given a certain amount of pocket money. Therefore in return for your household chores I have decided to give you fifteen cents a week.”
“Thank you.”
Now Aunt Harriet looked up with the sharp, discompassionate glance of a hawk. “What's the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Crying about your father?” Neither the voice nor the face was unkind; they simply expressed no emotion whatsoever; they were as drained of any feeling as a stream of water in the drought season.
“I'm not crying.”
“You are. Well, sit down, sit down. Don't stand there looking all arms and legs.”
Elizabeth collapsed into a chair, glaring down at the floor, pressing her lips together in order to hide their trembling.
“That's right,” Aunt Harriet had said. “I'm glad to see you making an effort at control. My parents raised me, and then died when your father was a boy, so I did my best to raise him to believe that a display of feelings is weak and unworthy. And
I have been appalled at the lack of emotional discipline your father permitted in you.” She looked over Elizabeth's head, at a dark and lurid moonlit seascape that was hanging a fraction crooked on the wall. “Straighten that picture behind you, Elizabeth, if you please.”
Elizabeth obeyed.
“That's better. I can't imagine how it got awry. I've forbidden you to roughhouse in here.”
“I haven't, Aunt Harriet. I never come in here at all unless you send for me.”
“Sit down again, please, Elizabeth. I want you to listen to me carefully. I want you to remember that I expect complete self-control from you at all times. In my house I will tolerate no scenes.”
“I have no intention of making scenes,” Elizabeth had answered with gangly, thirteen-year-old dignity.
Aunt Harriet ignored her, continuing to speak in the level, expressionless voice that Elizabeth found so disconcerting. “As I said, I have always thought your father was wrong in permitting you to display your emotions in the way that he did. I know you are at what I believe is called the ‘difficult age,' but your total lack of control seems to me appalling and thoroughly unnecessary.”
“I think I have a certain amount of control,” Elizabeth said.
“Elizabeth, will you please have the courtesy not to interrupt me? Remember that what I am saying is for your own good.” Everything Aunt Harriet said was always for Elizabeth's good. “And I speak from bitter experience. You think I am unfeeling. But please remember that your father was my brother
and that I loved him as much as you did, and more, because I am a great deal older than you are and know more of suffering than you, child, could ever imagine, and because I brought your father up and he was as much my son as my brother.”
“He was
my
father,” Elizabeth said.
“Please be quiet and listen to me. You must not be hurt because I cannot give you the demonstrations of affection to which you were accustomed from your father.”
Since her father had been extremely reserved, and only instinct had told Elizabeth how much he loved her, this took her rather aback; but she held her tongue.
“You can rest assured,” Aunt Harriet continued, “that I will behave toward you as I would my own child. And you, on your part, must learn to control your emotions. I do not, for instance, care to be kissed.”
“I don't want to kiss you,” Elizabeth said, wishing she could get back up to the attic. She stood up.
But Aunt Harriet held up her heavily veined hand. “Just a moment, please, Elizabeth.”
Elizabeth's long legs capsized under her again in unwilling obedience.
“You must not wear your heart so on your sleeve,” Aunt Harriet said, and for a moment the mask left her face and a look of pain came into her eyes. “I think you are old enough now to learn that people do not like to be loved too much. It embarrasses them. It makes them feel smothered. They feel drenched, drowned. Do you understand me?”
“No,” Elizabeth said.
“I suppose it is your heritage, but if you do not wish to be
unhappy you must learn to combat it. It is far easier to give love than it is to receive it, and you are always spilling your affections about as though people considered it a privilege to pick them up. Let me assure you that they do not. People are much too preoccupied with their own emotions to welcome being burdened with anyone else's. Love is a very demanding thing, Elizabeth, and you will find that people do not care to have too great demands made of them. Your father—”
“Please leave my father out of it,” Elizabeth had cried, not caring if she was rude, not caring if she was displaying lack of emotional discipline.
Even through her hurt she had wondered what experience had made Aunt Harriet feel that she had to talk to her grief-stricken niece in that manner.
 
Now, sitting in forlorn solitude on her pile, Elizabeth took off her glasses misted by the ocean spray and peered out at the horizon. She felt that there was more than a grain of truth in her aunt's harsh words. It was not good to wear your heart on your sleeve where the Dotties of the world could see it and mock, and Kurt might feel overwhelmed by it.
Ben's voice from up the boardwalk broke into her thoughts. “Liz—Elizabeth!”
She raised her head with relief. “Huloo, Ben!”
Ben came toward her, singing, “Did you ever hear tell of sweet Betsy from Pike? All alone, my dove?”
“Mm-hm.”
Ben jumped down off the boardwalk and scrambled up onto the pile Kurt had vacated. “This thing's warm.” He
wagged an accusing finger at Elizabeth. “‘Who's been sitting in my chair?' asked the papa bear.”
“Kurt,” she said shortly.
“Where's Kurt gone?”
“To the party at Irving's.”
Ben listened for a moment to Jane and John Peter's recorders and said, “How ghoulish,” before calling to them, “Play something sad.”
“Liz just asked for something silly.”
“I want something sad and I'm older than Liz. Play the one about the sailor boys and the girls.”
“What?” John Peter called.
“
Les Filles de Saint-Malo
,” Elizabeth called back.
“That's what I said, isn't it?” Ben shouted.
Again Jane and John Peter changed their tune. Ben said in very bad French, “
Les filles de Saint-Malo ont les yeux couleur de l'eau
… We were able to take down the props for Courtmont's play and put up everything for
Macbeth
. How's that for speedy? Thank goodness Price is too cheap to have elaborate sets. Hey, what's the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Now, don't try to fool Uncle Ben. Kurt upset you?”
“No, heavens, Ben, don't be nuts. I'm violently happy!”
“Hurrah!” Ben said. He leaned over and put his hand on her knee. “Did you want to go to Irving's?”
“No.”
“Seen Price yet about using Soapie's room and board for next week?”
“Not yet. Being in
Macbeth
ought to clinch it, though.”
“I wouldn't count your chickens before they hatch.”
“All right. I won't. But why?”
“I just don't trust Price to do the right thing.”
“Okay, Ben. You probably know best.”
“I'm glad to see somebody put that hellion in her place. I like Dottie the way I like a cockroach in my bathtub. Listen, Liz, can't anything be done with that aunt of yours?”
“You know she doesn't approve of the theatre,” Elizabeth said gloomily.
“Neither does my father. He wants me to be a broker, like he is. He hated it every time I got an acting job when I was a kid. Especially if it meant going on tour with Mother and being gone for months.”
“You can hardly blame him for that,” Elizabeth said. “It must have been awfully lonely for him. Anyhow, he doesn't
really
make a fuss, Ben, and your mother really wants you to be an actor.”
“Mother's a dream,” Ben said. “Well, I promised Dad I'd stay out of the theatre for four years and go to college. A hell of a lot of good it's done me. A B.A. degree and everybody on Broadway's forgotten I ever existed. I wouldn't have this lousy assistant stage-managing glorified apprentice job otherwise. It's a pity we didn't go to college together, Liz. We'd have had a lot of fun … Hey, Liz, isn't that Price coming along the boardwalk?”
It was. Ben poked her in the ribs and Elizabeth called out to him, “Oh, Mr. Price …” She jumped down from her pile
and stood with her hands on the edge of the boardwalk, looking up at him.
“Yes, Liz, what is it? I'm in a hurry.”
“Mr. Price—” she hesitated, then plunged. “I didn't want to bother you before the show was over tonight, but Sophie wanted me to tell you that since she'd paid her room and board through next week and wasn't going to be here she wanted me to have it—if—if that was all right.”
J. P. Price had not yet recovered from a disagreeable scene with Dottie and his face didn't soften. “I'm afraid that's a little irregular.”
“Please, Mr. Price. You know this summer's terribly important to me, and I've been so happy here. Even a week longer makes a lot of difference. It's—it's not that I want to leave, you know.”
“You shouldn't have come if you couldn't stay the whole season. You're depriving someone else of a scholarship and I shall have to find someone to replace you in your work.”
“But I didn't know I couldn't stay! I didn't have any idea I couldn't until this morning. My aunt promised me I could. But she doesn't approve of the theatre. Not this theatre—
the
theatre—and—”
Mr. Price relented. “Okay, Liz. We'll let it go this time since Sophie had paid ahead.”
“Oh, thank you, Mr. Price! Good night.”
“Good night.”
“Going to the party at Irving's?” Ben asked.
“That's right,” Mr. Price said. “You kids had better go to
bed. There'll probably be a lot of work for you tomorrow.”
“All right, we will,” Elizabeth said. She climbed back onto her pile next to Ben as Mr. Price strode off.
“There's one man who's in the theatre to make money and nothing else,” Ben said. “My God, what a fuss for an extra twenty bucks. I should think he'd realize you're valuable to him. He always makes more money when you're in the box office than anyone else.”
“You're cracked.”
“People see you and they buy ten tickets instead of two.”
In the darkness Elizabeth grinned, touched by Ben's dogged loyalty. “My charm may be fatal but I'm afraid you overestimate it. Look, what train is Courtmont going to take? I didn't know trains ran here in the middle of the night.”
“Train, my foot,” Ben said. “She's going to drive that emerald green convertible of hers. I think I'll go get a hamburger somewhere. Hungry?”
“Yes. Ravenous.”
“Come along with me. I'll treat you.”
“You don't need to. A beautiful fat gentleman gave me a dollar tip this evening. That's more than I usually make in a whole week of tips. I'm filthy with money. I'll treat you.”
“We'll go dutch,” Ben said.
“Listen, after all the hamburgers you've given me you've got to let me treat you this once. For auld lang syne and all that. Now don't be difficult and argue with me, Ben.”
“Okay,” Ben said. “My mother told me always to give in gracefully.”
BOOK: The Joys of Love
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