The Middle Moffat (5 page)

When Rufus came home for lunch, she asked him to help her with the chairs.

"Who's coming?" he asked.

"Well, I don't know yet. But probably plenty of people will, with that sign out there."

Rufus helped Jane arrange the dining-room chairs in a semicircle. Then Jane picked some daisies in the lot across the street, and these she put in tall jelly glasses on the small hinged trays at either end of the organ. Next she put on her best white piqué dress. She begged Rufus to put on a clean sailor suit. This he absolutely refused to do. Saturday was Saturday.

"Well, at least you can wash your face," begged Jane. Rufus did not want to do this, either, but Jane caught him with the washcloth and got the worst smudges off.

Now it was nearly two o'clock. She had been so busy she had not been thinking about the music. She hoped it would swell through the house in the proper way, banging against people's eardrums. She wondered if there would be chairs enough for the audience. Supposing hundreds came, like at Woolsey Hall? If they did, they would have to sit on the long green lawn.

The idea of hundreds coming made Jane suck in her breath. Stagestruck! That's what she was, stagestruck.

She went to the window and lifted the curtain, hardly daring to look. Were the crowds arriving? No—nobody was coming. She should have made lots of signs and put them in store windows and on the bulletin board in front of the Town Hall. "Seated one day at the organ," she hummed.

Nobody was going to come, she thought. But as she was thinking this, she saw Clara Pringle and her little brother, Brud. Clara looked at the sign on the tree and then straggled up the walk, dragging Brud along. Brud looked as though he had been crying. Tears were in his eyes.

Jane met them at the door.

"We come to the show," said Clara.

"There isn't any show," said Jane. "This is goin' to be an organ recital."

"All right then," said Clara, "here's my pins."

She emptied a handful of pins into Janey's palm. In this neighborhood, ten pins or one cent was the usual price of admission.

"Does he have to pay?" asked Clara, ¡jointing to Brud, who was standing there looking very miserable.

"No," said Jane. "And neither do you. This is free. Like at Woolsey Hall. Did you ever have to pay to go there?" she asked scornfully, dropping the pins back into Clara's hand.

"Never been," said Clara.

Clara and Brud went into the parlor and sat down together in the big armchair. They squirmed around until they were comfortable and then pulled out their lollipops.
Imagine bringing lollipops to an organ recital!
thought Jane. Then there was a shuffling step on the porch. My goodness, the oldest inhabitant! The most important man in Cranbury! How nice of him to come! Jane couldn't say one word. He sat down on a corner of the couch and beamed. Jane closed the window behind him so he wouldn't catch cold.

She looked at the clock in the kitchen and found it was just two o'clock. Time to begin. She went to the front window for one last look. It was, not good to begin until everyone was seated. But heavens! Who were all these people? Dozens of ladies, all dressed in white, gathered around the big elm tree, talking, laughing, and screaming. "Look, girls," said one, pointing to the sign, "'Organ recital by one of the Moffats!'"

"Let's go, let's go," they chorused.

"Yes. We have plenty of time," said one.

Now the ladies in white were all coming up the path. With their scarves fluttering in the summer breeze, they looked like butterflies. One seemed to be Miss Buckle, and one looked like Mrs. Price, but Jane wasn't sure. With so many ladies it was hard to tell.

Jane fled into the dining room, screaming, "Mama! Mama!"

But Mama had gone out again. Jane couldn't even find Rufus. And, of course, Sylvie and Joe had not yet returned. Only Catherine-the-cat was there on the windowsill and she looked as though she were saying, "Now see what you've gotten yourself into."

"Oh, oh," groaned Jane, hearing the steps on the porch. She could flee, run out the back door, and pretend it was all a joke. But could she? No. The honor of the Moffats forbade this. What would the oldest inhabitant think? He might never speak to her again. Besides, how could she ever look Clara Pringle in the face again? She had said organ recital. So all right then, organ recital.

Jane opened the screen door. Miss Buckle—it was Miss Buckle—stepped in first.

"Hello, Jane," she said with a brisk smile, "we are the ladies of P'fessor Fairweather's Browning Society, on our annual outing. We see there is an organ recital today. So—here we are."

To those behind her, she said in the crisp way she had of talking, "This is Jane Moffat—the middle one."

"Oh!" said the ladies, the ones in back standing on tiptoe to get a look at Jane. "Well, is it time for the concert?"

"It's not a concert," said Jane, "it's an organ recital."

"I see," nodded the ladies. "Is it time for that then?"

Jane nodded her head slowly, and the crowd came in. Jane thought to herself,
I should have had an usher.

The ladies arranged themselves around the room, on the porch, and some out on the lawn, sitting on their handkerchiefs to keep from getting grass stains. While they were so arranging themselves, the oldest inhabitant beamed and nodded his head. Brud Pringle watched him, fascinated, and offered him a lick of his lollipop.

Jane sat down to play.

Miss Buckle said, "Hush, girls," and everyone grew still.

Jane, too, remained silent and motionless. Perhaps she was dreaming. But a glance through her lashes out of the corner of her eye convinced her there really were lots and lots of ladies all over the place.
Organ recital! Music! Bach!
Words that no longer had any meaning for her raced through her head. She finally raised her hands to the keyboard. She began pumping hard and desperately with her feet, hoping it would be like Julius Sampson at Woolsey Hall when the first powerful notes shook the audience. However, she was not really one bit surprised when she recognized the first few notes as those of "My Country, 'Tis of Thee." Each note was accented by a breathless wheeze from the tired pedal.

The first few notes, though, were all anyone was destined to hear. For, as Janey pumped down on the pedals with might and main, they gave one loud gasp, and then with a plaintive, whishing noise, like air going out of a rubber balloon, they slumped to the floor, exhausted, defeated by a week of Rufus's rapid one-foot pedaling, and by Janey's own passionate outbursts. Anyway, there they were, flat on the ground, and though Janey conscientiously dug at them with her toes to bring them up again, it was useless. They would not rise again. To tell the truth, Jane was really relieved. However, she was too embarrassed to turn around.

"It's broke," she murmured.

"Oh, what a pity," said Miss Buckle. "We shall..." But what Miss Buckle was going to say, no one ever knew. All of a sudden from out of the open places over the sunken pedals fluttered a horde of moths. They had been hatching for some time in the felt linings within the organ, and now they all took flight. There seemed to be thousands of them. The ladies screamed. They covered their ears and held on to their heads, while the moths fluttered blindly about. The oldest inhabitant just sat and beamed, blowing them out of his whiskers now and then. Brud Pringle tottered around the room trying to catch them in his sticky hands. Catherine-the-cat, with a gleam in her eye, leaped from chair to table pursuing the fluttering moths. Jane didn't know what to do. She wished she had a butterfly net.

"Oh, oh, oh! Run, girls, run!" screamed one of the ladies, and they all made for the door, with moths settling on their hair nets and even getting down their necks. "Save me!" cried Mrs. Price, banging through the screen door. And all the ladies rushed from the house, followed by a stream of the fluttering moths. Fortunately Mama was coming up the walk.

"What's going on?" she asked in amazement.

Without waiting for an answer, she tried to restore order.

"Shoo! Shoo!" She waved her gloves at the moths. Some of the ladies helped by swishing their scarves, but most of them ran around in circles, fingers in their ears and eyes tightly closed. Mrs. Price ran and hid in the honeysuckle bush. Jane shooed the moths off the oldest inhabitant, although he said not to bother. He didn't mind them. They didn't bite.

Gradually, the moths disappeared. Mrs. Price hesitantly emerged from the honeysuckle bush. But every now and then one of the insects would fly out of somebody's sleeve or scarf and there would be more squeals and screams.

"Now," said Mama when she learned what had happened, "everybody sit down quietly and we'll have some homemade grape juice." She didn't like to have people flee from her house. She thought grape juice would make up for it. The ladies sat down. They shook their clothes and they patted their hair. Then suddenly they all began to laugh. They screamed and shrieked now with laughter. Jane had heard ladies laugh like this when she went past a house where there was a party. It had never happened before at the Moffats' house, though. Tears rolled down Miss Buckle's chubby cheeks. Even Mrs. Price smiled wanly.

While they were sipping their grape juice and laughing merrily, Rufus rode up on his scooter. A party! When Jane told him about the moths, he was sorry he hadn't been there. He might have collected enough to make his own exhibit case of them for nature study.

The oldest inhabitant was the first to leave. He looked all right still and none the worse for the experience, thought Jane.

"Thank you, mysterious middle Moffat," he said to her as he shuffled down the path. "It was really better than pulling rabbits out of sleeves."

Jane smiled at him. Mysterious or middle or both, she and he were still friends. That was good.

The Pringles left next, covered with gingersnap crumbs. And when all the ladies of the Browning Society finally fluttered down the path with a few last moths hovering behind them, Jane sat down on the top step of the porch munching a gingersnap. If she wanted to give any organ recitals, she thought, she would have to study and study and study and study. Otherwise, all that would come out when she sat down to play would be "My Country, 'Tis of Thee," with two fingers at the most, and you couldn't hope to shake people out of their seats with that.

Unless, of course, the organ was full of moths, like this one.