This was his last appearance in public, unless you can count a visit or two to his office in the Western Union building, to which he went from his home in a closed carriage, and dodged in by way of the basement office before any one could see him. No one who saw him at the wedding would have suspected that he was so near death, and perhaps he would not have been had not an injudicious ride, in company with Dr. Munn, on the day before Thanksgiving, caused a cold which settled on his lungs, brought on a hemorrhage and paved the way to death.
The story of Mr. Gould’s last night on earth is one easily told. It was as simple as any tale could be. He was prepared, and so were all the members of his family. His going off was merely a question of time. All understood how it would be. He had laid his earthly house in order, had explained to his older sons exactly what his property was, how he had made it, and what he should do to develop it if he lived.
He had passed the distressing stage of his disease and he coughed but little, and that weakly. The beard upon his face hid to some extent the terrible emaciation, but the chalky pallor of the swarthy skin was sharp and startling. He dozed at times, but never seemed to lose consciousness. He did not suffer physically. There was nothing to fight against now but the lassitude of utter exhaustion, and this the doctors—Munn and Janeway—did with the most powerful stimulants, thus prolonging life by a few hours, but doing no good that could be measured.
Several times during the night it was thought that he was going, and the family were hastily summoned to the bedside. But he rallied each time with wonderful vitality, and his will remained strong and under control to the last.
Those in the house besides the medical attendants and nurses were the children—George J. Gould, who is already enthroned as his father’s successor in business; Edwin, the second son; Helen Miller Gould, the young heiress, who was the apple of her father’s eye; Howard, who is just coming into manhood; the schoolgirl daughter Anna and the youthful Frank, with Mrs. George Gould, Mrs. Edwin Gould and a lady intimately connected with the family.
Daylight brought an apparent renewal of the lease of life. It was not much of a rally, but it was enough to give hope that the invalid would struggle along through a great part of the day. Windows were raised and curtains drawn in parts of the house, giving it an animated and lively look which it had not worn when all the shades were down.
Shortly after the night-watch of newspaper men had gone away young Mrs. Gould appeared and drove away, in her carriage for a brief stay. She said that her father-in-law was much the same as he had been and perfectly conscious. An early caller was General Manager Hain, of the “L” road system. He stayed but a moment, and when he resumed his trip down town he little realized that the message of death, which was to be followed by the draping of all the “L” road engines, would reach the office almost as soon as he.
The December sun came up and gilded the roof of the extension in which the multi-millionaire lay gasping out the remnant of his life. It caught in the glass of the conservatory and sent baffling lights into the eyes of passers gazing curiously up at the windows which shrouded the drama of life and death within. Audacious, it trickled in between the shutters until a hand closed them tight, and it saw, what few have seen, the great magician of Wall street bent low by a power greater than his own.
Just then, as if moved by some sympathetic force, all of the raised shades were lowered and the great house assumed a somber aspect. This was just after nine o’clock in the morning. A few moments later a messenger boy came out of the house bearing a telephone message from Dr. Munn to his wife, stating that Mr. Gould had died at a quarter past nine o’clock. And thus the news that a king was dead trickled out unwillingly, as it were, through the massive oaken doors that front his palace. If Jay Gould’s secret could have been longer kept it doubtless would have been, but Death sounds a tocsin which even a master of silence cannot muffle.
In all the spacious palace where this rich man died there was no room more plain and simple than his own. There was nothing garish, nothing to attract or astonish the eye, none of the rare and beautiful bric-a-brac or articles of toilet which have made Miss Helen’s boudoir famous in the social world. The furniture was massive, but simple; the colors were subdued. Through the open door the railroad manipulator could see his beloved study—a study, indeed, where he has pored with such relentless zeal by day and night over law books and other weighty tomes, planning the campaigns which made him a Napoleon in his line, and which were so disastrous to those who opposed him. They were fading now from his sight. He should plan no more.