“What a queer girl you are,” thought the Doctor, serious himself; and then recalled what she had just said about her mother, “we all love her,” not “how I love her,” but “how we all love her”; assuming that her own affection for her mother must be common to all the party.
The Doctor cogitated over this: “I can understand mother’s love, and its response in all human kind; filial love, brother’s love, sisterly affection, and much that is implied thereby, they are innate in all races; but when it comes to thinking and speaking and acting as if all others are sharing our affection for the one we love in particular, as Adele assumed, then I think a still nobler spirit exists, something borne in from without must have been granted her. She seems even unnaturally good. Here am I looking for this something-worth-knowing as manifested by races at large to-day, and I hear much in India about the brotherhood-of-man; yet, right here under my eyes appears a girl manifesting it in her experience, as if she knew more about it and its differentiations, truly, than any of us. Now one might say that each individual loves his own parents, or ought to; and certainly here in Asia what they call ancestral veneration does obtain without necessarily much ardent love; but all that is a very different thing from seeing the very best of one’s self in others, and acknowledging it—feeling that one is but an exponent of the good in all, yet without conceit. That appeals to me as the work of the Holy Spirit in man; one may say unnatural, because more than natural; and that is to be born again—spiritual rebirth.”
The illness of Mrs. Cultus soon manifested another phase. No matter how incongruous her delusions or hallucinations might be, her own character, the principle of her own individuality, always dominated; the energy which lies deeper than even the manifestation of life, on which the identity of man and his existence and the continuance of his existence depend, was never inactive; the principle of individuality which determines both the form of character and the physical frame, as well as the connection between them, was never violated. It was Carlotta Gains Cultus herself; from her came the thoughts. They were not words put into her mind by suggestions from others.
One of her delusions was that she had lost all her money, her fortune, and was now in a foreign land among many strangers to whom she might be obliged to appeal, in case family necessities forced them to work for their living. From her point of view this was the direst calamity conceivable. She expressed herself, however, with that peculiar tact which showed how all the characteristics she had inherited from her father were rooted and grounded in her very being. She was talking to Miss Winchester:
“Frank, do you think the people over here would like it if the Professor should lecture before them? Would he draw good houses?”
Miss Winchester smiled, but knowing full well that Mrs. Cultus could not be easily deceived, and would not be satisfied by anything indefinite, answered as if serious:
“Of course, he’d draw, once or twice, on account of his reputation; but I doubt about keeping it up.”
“Why not, Frank?”
“India’s a complicated place, you know; only Jadoo Wallahs and balloon ascensions draw intelligent people—h’m!—native crowds don’t count any more than middle-of-the-road people do at home; now and again a polo or cricket match, even the theatres are at a discount.”
“Couldn’t we try the Bishop and his set?”