Still Kornicker did not show any intention of quitting the room, but shifted from one leg to the other, in a fidgety manner, as if he had something farther to communicate, upon which however he did not like to venture. At last he said: ‘Your daughter?’
Rust turned a quick keen eye on him, but farther than this evinced no emotion.
‘Perhaps she may need a friend, when—when——’
‘I’m dead,’ said Rust, concluding what seemed to be rather an embarrassing sentence to Kornicker.
‘I’m not exactly the fellow to make the offer,’ said Kornicker, adopting the conclusion which Rust had given to the phrase; ‘but—but I’ll keep an eye on her, and will lend her a helping hand if she gets in trouble.’
Rust’s countenance expressed neither pleasure nor anger, as he answered:
‘Nothing can be done for her. Her fate is sealed; her path is marked out. There is neither turn nor winding in it, nor escape from the destiny to which it leads. She has taken the first step in it, and must follow it to the end. Look at the reckless and abandoned of her sex, who crowd our thoroughfares at night. Their fate must be her fate; an outcast—then the tenant of a public prison where her associates will be the thief and the felon. That’s her second step. The third is—to her coffin; broken down; beggared, perhaps starving, she’ll die surrounded by the offscouring of the earth—happy if she reaches her grave before she has run her full course.’
There was something in the apathetic manner in which the old man pointed out the future fate of his own child, that actually silenced Kornicker. He knew not what to say. There was no grief to console; no anger to deprecate; no wish to be fulfilled. He had however come to the prison with his mind made up to do something, and he did not like to be thwarted in his purpose. But before he had fairly determined what course was to be pursued next, Rust interrupted the current of his ideas by saying, as he pressed his hand upon his heart:
‘You can do nothing for me. The disease is here; and the only physician who can heal it is Death. Could you blot the past from my memory and leave it one vast blank; could you gild the future with hopes which this heart did not tell me were utterly hollow; then perhaps Michael Rust might struggle on, like thousands of others, with some object in view, always to be striven for, but always receding as he advanced, or turning to ashes in his grasp. But it cannot be. [!-- original reads 494 --]I’ve played my part in the great drama of life, and the curtain will soon fall.’
A spirit of callous indifference pervaded all that he said and did; and making a gesture to Kornicker, forbidding all farther remark, he threw himself on the bed, and drew the clothes about his head, as if determined to shut out all sound.