Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 November 1879 — LOCKED IN A CLOSET. [ARTICLE]

LOCKED IN A CLOSET.

* Aint Clackett h:ul invited company to tea. 1 • Aunt Clackett lived all alone in a little, gable-ended cottage, with Tur-key-red curtains to all the windows, a velvety mass of fine geraniums in the • casements, and odd little three-cor- , nered cupboanls, with glass fronts, whose shelves were piled With old china, curious specimens of japanned ware and pieces of brocade and satin which belonged to a century gone by. Aunt Clackctt was one of these odd, original old ladies who, having contrived to wreck their matrimonial bark early in life, are continually steering off in all sorts of Unexpected directions. She had espoused the cause of woman’s independence with great vehemence, joined a debating club, and quarreled with the Vice-President at. the' second meeting. , “ A tig for woman’s rights!” said Miss. Clackett; *■ They’ve more rights than they know what to do .with already.” Then she devoted herself to philanthropy, turned her house into a miniature orphan asylum, and went prowling about the limes and glitters in search of proteges. But after she hail been robbed twice she abandoned the whole thing and went for the natural sciences. “Nature can’t disappoint one,” said Miss Clackctt. But Nature did. TJie little fishes in her aquarium died, thef stuffed animals .fell to pieces, ami the rare specimens of plants in her (herbarium turned out to be. poison ivy, and had nearly been the death of her. So.then Miss Clackett took to litera- * ture. “ Shakespeare is eternally divine,” said Miss Clackett.' “Ami the creations of one’s Own brain are penietually new.”

So that how she went about with inky, fingers,, a portfolio under her arm. and a rhyming dictionary always in - reach, while her niece Dorothea did the housework. Or at least the girl whom she called her niece, for Dorothea Dodd was no actual relation to the eccentric little ■ old lady in the snuff-colored front ami twinkling spectacles. She was tfie last lingering relic of the p.hilambropic scheme, a dark skinned, sdtemn-eved little orphan, whom Miss Clackett hail fished up out of a rag-and-bottle cellar somewhere, ami had hid in the outhouse and refused to go when the other orphans were banished, en masse, to the care of the public charities and fiorrections. , “ Please, ma’am, can’t I stay?” said Dorothea. “ I won’t be no trouble, and I’m a good ’un to work.’” “ Bless my soul!” said Miss Clackett-. “ Where have you been all this while?” “Please, ma'am, in the shed,” answered Dorothea, promptly. “Well, then, I suppose you'll have to stay,” said Miss Clackett.' Ami so Dorothea stayed. ” Dorothea,” said Miss Clackett, on this particular afternoon, “is everything ready?” ? J And the Dorothea who responded to Ker summons was as unlike the weirdlooking little creature who had hid as was the crimson cinnamon rose at the ' window from the leafless stem which had tapped against the casement at the . rude touch of the February blast. For Dorothea, like the rose, -had blossomed out a fair, slight maiden, with a faint flow on her olive cheeks, very black air, growing low on a sweet forehead, and the softest and most appealing of » ejes. Which, were neither black nor brown, but melted into the deepest , wine-lights at even emotion of her heart.

“Everything is ready, Aunt Clackett/’ said Dorothea. “Cold boiled tongue, lobster salad, buttermilk biscuit, preserved phmis and currant jelly-” “ Yest very nice, very nice!” said Miss Clackett, absentlv. “What do you think, Dorothea? Would vou call the heroine of my new story ‘ Dulalia’ or * Lucetta?’ ” “I don’t know—Lucetta, I think,” said Dorothea, assuming the air of a critic. “It is to be published in the Sun.” said Miss Clackett, triumphantly. “ I am to pay all expenses, and reserve the right of dramatization!” “But I thought,” said Dorothea, “that people made money out of such things. But you are ‘ spending'money, “Money!” repeated the ‘old lady, loftily. “ But who wants to make 11 13 fame that I sigh after. “But you've got to change vour dress and do your hair yet, aunt,” suggested Dorothea, gently. “So I have—so I have!” said Aunt Clackett, “ I do declare to you, child, I had, nearly forgotten about the tea party. Let me see—whom have we invited?” “ Your cousin, Mr. Folkstone, and his wife,” said Dorothea. < “Oh, yes, I remember now. ’ said Aunt Clackett. “Fanny Folkstone, who is always sending me jelly and embroidered slippers, and* writes" me such loving letters every birthday.” “And Mr. Mole, the clergyman” “Such a pious, delightful young man!” said Miss Clackett. “And the Misses Walker, who enjoy hearing the portions of my new serial so much, and my cousin, Theodore Test, and old Mrs Rapida&knd Seringa Pole. Yes. yes, I remember now!”

And Miss Clackett trotted up stain to put on her black silk dress and gold mosaic set. to do honor to the guests she had completely forgotten. In the middle of her toilet, however, a literary ide* occurred to her, and sitting down to commit it to paper, she lost all count of time, until the Hum of voices below warned her that her guests had at last arrived. She then jumped up hastily, wiped her pen and flung the foolscap sheets this way and that. /‘I must make haste,” she said. Hurrying down the stairs, she bethought her of a certain little garnet clasp which she liked to wear, sewed on a velvet ribbon, across the parting of the snuff-colored “ front” on her forehead. And squeezing herself into one of the odd little octagon closets between the parlor and the dining-room, she unluckily contrived to lock herself in by some patent arrangement as complete as it was terrible. “ That self-locking latch I had put on last week,” said Miss Clackett to herself. ‘‘Oh, dear! oh, dear! Here I am, just exactly like the bride in the ‘ Mistletoe Bough’ song.” She was about to call to Dorothea to come and liberate her. when the sound of her own name, pronounced in the mild accents of Mr. Mole, the clergyman, arrested the words upon her lips. I. . > “ Where is our dear Miss Clackett?” demanded that honey-voiced divine. “ She must have fallen into a tit of abstraction up stairs,” said the eldest Miss Walker. “ Tea is quite ready,” said Dorothea. “ I have rung thb bell twice. Perhaps I had better go up stairs and see what has become of her.” “ Do, my dear,” said old Mrs. Rapidan, who spoke in a slow, comfortable way. “ for I’m quite perishing for my tea!” Away tripped Dorothea, and presentI ly she came back with something of a seared face.

“ I can’t find her anywhere,” said she. “I’ve called and called—and I’ve looked in every room, and she isn’t there!” “ Depend upon it,” said Mr. Folkstone, smiting the table with his hand, “ she’s been and gone and done it at last!” “ Done what?” said mild Mr. Mole. “ Committed suicide, 1 ’ said Mr. Folkstone. “ She always was three-quar-ters mad!” “ Nonsense!” said Mrs. Rapidan, with a spice of quiet malice in her voice. “ It was nothing on earth but temper.” “ I’ve always thought she ought to be £ut in an asylum,” said the youngest liss Walker. “ And have an administrator appointed over her affairs,” added Mr. Theodore Test, abstractedly helping himself to a slice of cold boiled tongue and another of York ham. Miss Clackett, who was not without a sense of humor, chuckled to herself as she listened to their remarkably free and uncomplimentary -expressions of opinion. “ Well,” said Mrs. Rapidan, “ dead or alive, I suppose we had better have our tea!” “ I think,” viciously announced Miss Seringa Pole, “ that she’s as mad as a March hare! And I think her money should be equally divided between her relations.” “So do I,” said Mr. Folkstonc u And if she has hanged or drowned herself “It’s all tHose horrid literary habits of hers,” said Mr. Mole, with his mouth full of lobster salad. ‘ ‘ Enough to undermine the strongest person’s equiliorium!” • “I knew it all along,” said Mrs. Folkstone. *“ I could see she was losing her mind—what little there was of j it to lose—poor, silly old woman!” “ Perhaps it might be as well to look ’ around the premises a little, after supper!” said Mr. Mole, with a hungry glance in the direction of the cold meat. “And if you will be good enough to pour out the tea —” “ I won't!" said Dorothea, with bitting cheeks and a stamp of her little foot. “Eh?” said Mr. Test. '“What?” ejaculated old Mrs. Rapidan. “Go out of the house, every one of you,” cried Dorothea. “To ‘dare to talk so of aunt, who is so good and generous! To sit quietly down to eating and drinking when she is not here! To call her a lunatic—a—a—” “Young woman,” §aid Mr. Mole, “you are taking too much upon your-

“ I should think so,” said Mrs. Folkstone, “fora pauper foundling picked out of the workhouse!”* “ Well, I never!” cried the Misses Walker in chorus. “Leave the house, Lsay,” reiterated Dorothea. “It is' Aunt. Clackett’s house. You have no business to sit here and talk so about her!” “jfunZ Clackett, indeed!” said Seringa Pole. “As if she were any relation of yours, miss! I, for one, shall say what I please about her. She is a crazy old lunatic, and—’.’ But just here was the sound of a vigorous pair of knuckles on the door w hich connects the parlor closet with the dining-room. “ What's that?” said Mr. Mole, starting up in alarm. “A ghost!” said Miss Walker, nervously. “ Rats!” said Mr. Folkstone. “ No, it Isn’t, said Miss Clackett, “ it is I! Locked in here by mistake. Don> thea, you will find the patent key on the parlor mantel-shelf. Be so good as to get it and let me out.” And the next moment Miss Clackett walked smilingly out into the astonished hand of her relations and fnends, took the head of the table,' and began to pour out the tea. “A—hem!” coughed Mr. Mole. “We were really beginning to be ?uite alarmed about you,” said Mrs. blkstone, moving uncomfortably in her chair. “Sb I should think,'’ said Miss Clackett, cheerily. But she was as pleasant and cordial as ever, and when her guests took leave they really did not seem to know whether they had been overheard or not. After they were gone, however, Miss Clackett held out her hand to Dorothea. “ Come here and kiss me, my dear,” said she. “ I see that I have one friend left in the world, at least.” And she made her will next day in favor of Dorothea Dodd. “Not that I mean to die at present,” said she; “ but it’s always well to be prepared for any emergency.” And she never invited that particular party of guests to tea again as long as she lived. *