Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 November 1890 — MRS. PICKETT’S VENDUE. [ARTICLE]

MRS. PICKETT’S VENDUE.

BY J. L. HARBOUR.

“I never reckoned I'd live to see the day when my things would be sold at a vandoo!” sobbed poor old Mrs. Pickett, as she sat in her big green rocking chair, holding a corner of her checked gingham apron to her streaming eyes. “I reckon the very cheer I’m a settin’ in’ll have to go, an’ I’ll jbe turned out with nothin’ but the clothes on my back.” f A tall slender girl about sixteen i years old, who had been, kneeling by her grandmother’s chair vainly trying to comfort the old lady, rose and said: •“Oh, no, grandmother, I don’t think 'it will be as bad as that. I will see to it that your old chair and grandpa’s are not sold. You can save out such things as you care for most, but you know that we shall not need -half of the things in the two little rooms that we’re going to live in at the vil'lnge.” “Two little rooms in the village!” cried the old lady, throwing- up both hands with a fresh burst of tears. “And I’ve got to come down to two little' rooms, when I’ve been used all my life to pleDty of room, with my big closets and but’ry and good dry cellar and nice garden and all that. O, Doty, what could your grandpa Pickett have been thin kin’of to be so keerless? Dear me! dear me!” “He didn’t know, grandmother. None of us could know that he’d be taken away as he’ was,” replied the girl, her own eyes filling with tears. Grandfather Pickett had been killed instantly by a fall from his haymow two months before. He had been a kind and good man, but unwisely eccentric in some respects, since he had always made it a rule to tell no one, jnot even his wife, of his business afairs. • *Women haint no head for business; their capacity lays in other sp’eres, ” had been one of Grandfather Pickett’s sayings. So his wife had never been taken into his confidence, and at the time of his death she knew almost nothing about his private affairs. Some truths she soon discovered, to her sorrow. One of them came home to her with stunning and cruel force five days aftor the funeral, when Mr. Hiram Parks, a money-lender living in the village, came to tell her, in his cold, business-like way, that the mortgage ho had hold for ten years on the Pickett farm had never been paid, and that a settlement must now be made. He had besides a note of five hundred dollars, given him by Grandfather Pickett at the time the latter had built his now barn and added the last twenty acres to his farm. On this note nothing but the interest had been paid. Poor, dumbfounded Mrs. Pickett had not even known of the existence of the notes.

“And my husband never paid you anything on the note nor the mortgage?” she asked Parks. “No. ma’am, nothing but the interest. That was paid regular enough. He often said he could pay some on them both if he’d a mind to, but he’d rather wait and pay it all off in a lump. I supposed from that that he'd money in the bank, or loaned out so it was bringing in more interest than he was paying me.” But a careful search among Mr. Pickett’s papers did not give evidence that any one owed him a dollar, and a visit to the bank at the village proved that he had no money there. “He never would put money in the bank,” said Mrs. Pickett. “That was one of his odd idoes, and he’d never pay for anything in payments. He always wanted to pay it all in a lump. But I always thought that that mortgage must be ’bout all paid off, and it cant be that we’ve lived up all we vo got out of the farm in all these years, with us sellin’ three and four hundred dollars wuth of stock at a time. If Ira had only told mo more ’bout his affairs! Now I’ve got to meddle with business, whether I’ve any head for it or not. Dear me! dear me!” AH her lamentations ended with that pathetic “Dear me!” and a sorrowful shake of her gray head. Mrs. Pickett and her granddaughter Dorothy, were left alone. Dorothy was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Pickett’s only child, who, with his wife, had died when Dorothy was but five years old, and since that time she had been the light and joy of the fine old farmhouse.

• Aqd I’ve taken such comfort in thinkin’ that your gran’pa an’ me would leave you so nicely provided for and in a home of your own when we were gone. Dear me! dear me!” “It dont matter about me, grandma,” Dorothy said. “I am sorry only on your accounts I can teach, or sew, or work in a 6tore or do something else, and we can be very cosey and comfortable in our two snug little rooms. There will be somo money left for you after the note and the mortgage are paid.” It was decided that there should be a public sale, or vendue, of the effects no* needed for the new home to which they were to go. A “vandoo” was usually attended by everybody in the neighborhood, and the occasion was a semi-holiday. So there was general interest when the posters appeared announcing that Mahala J. Pickett, executrix of the estate of Ira YV. Pickett, would, bn October tenth, offer for sale such and such carefully described articles. Mrs. Pickett had a sorrowful duty in indicating the things Bhe consented to sell. “They sha’nt have my mahog’ny chist or drawers, nor my hair-cloth sofy. nor my flowered carpet, nor my two biff rockin’*cheers that my father and mooaot begun housekeeping with! And they sha’n’t have—oh dear, dear, there’s nothing I do want ’em to have!” Poor old lady! She found that even the simplest and most ordinary of her

belongings were dear to her. “There’s that green cupboard with the glass door, Dotty,” she said. “I s’pose it’ll have to go. We’ve got the red one, and I s’pose weßha’n’t want two. And there’s that qld oak chist up in the attic; it might as well go, and I reckon Rachel Day’ll bid it in. She, wanted to buy it of me once, thirty years ago. I can’t bear to think of her havin’ any of my things, and I’ll warrant she’ll come And bid in the very ones I hate to part with most.” * ‘Perhaps she won’t come to the sale at all, grandma,” said Dorothy. “Yes, she will!” replied Mrs. Pickett, positively. know Rachel Day. She’ll be here to glory over my trouble. It’ll be twenty years this fall since she and I spoke, and she never come to your grandpa’s funeral, and I know from that that we shall nevqr speak again. I’d an idea she’d come then. Such good friends as we used to be! Girls together, and so intimate that we had our dresses and bonnets just alike. And for twenty years we haint spoke, though we’ve met hundreds of times. Dear me! dear me!” Sweet of face and gentle of manner as Mrs. Pickett was. she was a woman of strong‘prejudices and firmness. She never sought a quarrel, and never continued one long if forced into it; she simply and for all time dismissed her enemies from her friends ship and affection. “When I’m done with anybody,” she said, “I’m done with ’em!” Acting on this unkindly and un» christianlike principle, she had “dropped” a friend of her girlhood and early womanhood twenty years before the death of her husband. Her son had quarreled with the only eon of her dearest friend, Mrs. Rachel Day. The mothers had unwisely taken up the matter, and not even the common sorrow that came upon them in the death of the sons in after years had served to bring them together. Each had waited for the other to speak, and both had kept silence. Mrs. Day came to the vendue, as Mrs. Pickett had predicted. Mrs. Pickett sat in the big rocking chair on the littie porch, and watched the progress of the sale through a mist of tears.

Other friends came and spoke words of cheer and sympathy, but Rachel Day, prosperous and happy, kept aloof. Occasionally she glanced toward her old friend, as she sat on the porch, a pathetic figure in her widow’s weeds, her gray head bowed, and her handkerchief often at her eyes; but if Mrs. Day felt sorry for Mrs. Pickett, she did not say so. “Going, going, going, gentlemen and ladles! Four and a half has been offered for this solid oak chest, as good as it was the day it was made! Four and a half, I’m offered. Who’ll make it five! Five, five, five—who says it? Are you all done, ladies and gentlemen? Third and last call, and—sold for tour and a half to the lady with the brown silk dress and black lace shawl!” The lady with the brown silk dress and black lace shawl was Rachel Day. Mrs. Pickett fancied she saw a gleam of triumph in the eyes of the new owner of the chest. Mrs. Day bought several of the things offered, and Mrs. Pickett added to her sorrow a sting of resentment and injured pride with each purchase Rachel made. “She does it only to aggrevate me,” Mrs. Pickett thought; “but let her go on.if it does her any good. 1 kin hold spite as long as anybody, but I wouldnot show it in such a way as this, if I was Rachel Day.” The vendue came to a close early in the afternoon, and the people departed,’ taking their new possessions with them. Mrs, Day was the last to go, and when she drove out "of the farmyard her wagon was well laden with the things she had purchased. Mrs. Pickett broke down entirely when she and Dorothy were left alone in Ihe almost empty house. Mr. Parks had given them until the next week to complete their arrangements for leaving. Then he proposed to take possession of the house and farm. Dorothy found much to do during the rest of the day. The one cqw her grandmother had kept had strayed away, and when milking time came Dorothy went in search of her. It was nearly dark when she r*» turned, driving the cow through the grass of the meadow lot. She had left her grandmother alono, and was surprised to hear voices in the kitchen when she returned to the house with her milking pail.

Looking in at an open window, she was still more surprised to see in the gathering gloom a woman kneeling hy her grandmother’s chair, while Mrs. Pickett was shaking her head in a dazed kind of way, and saying: “I don’t understand it. Rachel. It seems to me I must be dreaming, and that I’ll wake up pretty soon and find it ain’t so!” , . • “But you ain’t dreaming, Mahala,” Dorothy heard Mrs. Day say, with an hysterical and cheerful little laugh. “It’s all true us gospel. Here I am kneelin’ right by you. and there’s the money right in your lap.” “And you found it In that old oak chist that I thought had been empty for twenty years?” “Yes, in that secret place In the lid. Don’t you remember it?” “I do, now that you speak of it, Rachel; but I’d forgotten all about It before. It’s been so many years since that chist was ÜBed.” I' 1 Well, I remembered it as soon as I saw the chest,” replied Mrs. Day, “and when I got home with the things I bought to-day, and they had been curried into the house, and I found time to look them over, I put my fin* ger right on the spot where the spring was in the chest lid. The little door dropped, apd a roll of bills came tumbling down into thd chest. “I was so upset at first, Mahala, that I could hardly believe my senses; but when I’d shook and pinched my-

iseif to prove that I was awake, I found, ! it was true, and that the cavity in the lid was f ull of bills—more than enough to pay off the mortgage, and almost enough to pay off the note. ” ‘•And you brought it right over to me. Oh, Rachel!” „ “Course I did, Mahala! Whatever my other failings are. hateful and holding spite for years and all that, I’m honest, Mahala, and I wouldn’t touch a pin I’d no right to. ” “I know you wouldn’t, Rachel, and I didn’t mean to hint that you would. But I’m so glad you brought the money yourself.” “I did think of sending it,” said Mrs. Day; “but as I set thinking it aLI over, and how glad you’d be to get it in the middle of your trouble, I begun to feel sorry for you, Mahala, and the sorrier I got the moke ashamed I was of myself; and the chest and everything together called back old times until I just laid my head on the chest and had a good long cry. I got up feeling kinder and tenderer toward you than I’ve felt for twenty years, though there’s been times when I’ve wanted to make up bad enough, but I was afraid you wouldn’t.” “I’d been so glad to, Rachel!” For a long time the old ladies sat, forgetting and forgiving the past, and renewing a friendship not to be broken in the future. With the money Grandfather Pickett had secreted so carefully in the old Ghest, and the proceeds of the sale Mrs. Pickett easily made up enough to, pay off her husband’s indebtedness. Mrs. Day returned the articles she had bought at the sale, and Mrs. Pickett gradually regained possession of her most cherished household treasures. * I never could bear the thought of having a vandoo made of my things,” said Mrs. Pickett afterward, during one of her weekly visits to her friend Rachel, “but if I hadn’t made a vandoo of ’em, it aint likely that money’d ever been found, in my day, and you and I never would have made up. .So there are ‘gains for all our losses and balms for all our pain,’ as the poetry book says.” “That’s so, Mahala,” said Mrs. Day.'