The miser’s history went on as before—still gaining, still adding; while the daughter’s bloom passed slowly away. Her limbs lost their roundness, her face grew sharp and hollow, and grief sat ever upon it, until her friends had almost forgotten its former mirth and beauty, and were half persuaded that it had been always so. No questioning of mine would entice her to an explanation. “It is a matter with which you can have nothing to do. There is no remedy in your hands. Let me alone; I wrestle daily with my God.” What could I say? I was silent; for it was indeed a matter with which I had nothing to do. Preach to the drunkard over his cups; to the gambler, when he wins; to the man whose garments are like unto his who came from Edom, red with the blood of men, and gain a soul for Heaven; but the miser, with one foot on Mammon, the other on the grave, never yet turned from his first love, or forgot the gods which his own hands have fashioned. John Cornelius became used to his daughter’s declining health, and soon ceased to speak of it. Indeed, engrossed in his labors of accumulation, he began to think she was well enough, as well as she ever had been, and that the change, if change there was, was in his own eyes, which had, perhaps, grown somewhat dim with age. Poor Anne! she nightly sat at her father’s knees, and nightly read to him, and he nightly praised her beauty, and called her a foolish girl, and kissed away her tears, and babbled of gold, till her heart withered within her, and she withdrew to dream of her mother, and a great joy, and to gather a new courage to begin again her ceaseless task, ever hoping, ever disappointed. Thus ran a year away.
——
SECTION XIV.
One bright morning in November, here the sweetest month of all the twelve, Mr. Cornelius called at my office, and informed me that his daughter had been sick, confined to her bed for the past two days, and had expressed a wish to see me. He said her indisposition was but slight, attributed it to some frivolous cause, and expressed a hope that it would soon pass off. I looked up into his face; he was honest; still blind to his daughter’s decay; death stood palpably before him, robed in the freshness of youth. Death! How should he see death? Gold was ever in his thoughts; gold filled his vision; his taste, his scent were gold; and gold ran clinking into his ears: death had walked his house a year unrecognized.
I laid aside my papers, and accompanied Mr. Cornelius home. He passed into his own room, with the little table and the two chairs; I ascended to his daughter’s chamber. What a mockery was there of all that this world loves so much, strives after, and wins, with loss of body and of soul! Upon a bed, canopied with rich stuffs of woven silk and gold, with curtains of satin, rose-colored, and tugged with tassels of silver, spread with the finest linen, and covered with flowers, worked upon a ground of velvet, lay Anne, the miser’s daughter, pale and emaciated, and with her eyes, to whatever point they might turn, resting upon some new evidence of her father’s wealth and worldliness, upon some new evidence of the cause of all her sorrow. Her physician stood at her bed-side; as I entered he raised his finger to his lips, and came to me. “She is passing away,” he whispered. I approached the bed slowly, and on tiptoe. Anne felt my presence in the air, and turning her face toward me, held out her hand. I took it in mine. “I have called you,” said she, in a voice scarcely audible, “to take leave of you. You have been my good friend since the day that we first met in your office; I a poor woman, striving for that which I have long since found to be of little worth; when I am gone, transfer your friendship to my father. Tell him where I may be found, and bid him there seek for me. Oh, God! how long have I wrestled with thee, in bitter prayer, for this favor; thou wilt not, in the end, deny it to me. Farewell! We shall meet again! I go to my mother. Now bring my father to me, and let us be alone together.”
The physician pressed her hand in silence, turned to the wall, and went out. I followed, and we both hastened to call Mr. Cornelius. We found him counting over a bag of silver, which he had just received from a tenant.
“How is my daughter? Better—well?” he asked, still continuing to count, and to test the genuineness of the metal by ringing it upon the table.
“Sir—your daughter is dying.”
“Dying!” and the coin rolled merrily upon the floor. “Dying—doctor? Tut, tut. You jest.”
“Mr. Cornelius, your daughter wishes to speak with you, to give you her last words in life.”