The girl leant back against the cushions with an expression of weariness.
“We shall not be married until Mr. Montella’s year of mourning is at an end, so I shall not have to decide hastily,” she answered. “I shall do what appears to me to be the best. Religion is not meant to separate man and wife.”
Mrs. Lowther sighed. “What a pity you have an Agnostic for a father,” she said.
CHAPTER VII
THE UNEMPLOYED
Mrs. Lowther’s remark was not without foundation. The Earl, despite the fact that he was patron of more than one living in the country, had severed his connection with the Established Church some years ago, and now professed no religion, save that of Agnosticism. His son—a youth at Sandhurst—followed in his wake, talked grandiosely of the First Cause, and pinned his faith on Huxley. Patricia saved the reputation of the family—in the eyes of her father’s tenants, at least—by attending the Parish Church regularly when she was in the country; but as Patricia’s religion had never been properly moulded, it was liable to variation. Her first finishing governess being a Roman Catholic, her youthful mind had been filled with the mystic saint-lore of the Roman Church, and she fell deeply in love with St. Patrick, her patron saint. As Patricia had always been deeply in love with somebody or other since the days of her swaddling clothes, however, her father was not greatly concerned, and expressed no surprise when she told him one morning that she found Mariolatry and Saintolatry detestable, and asked to have the Roman Catholic governess sent away. Good St. Patrick was dislodged from the little niche she had accorded him, his image was shattered into a hundred pieces, and Patricia was heart-whole once more. The next phase through which she passed was that of admiration for Comte and Swedenborg, but as the ethics of both were beyond her comprehension, she was little influenced by either. From Positivism she found her way into Unitarianism, and with her usual craving for some great teacher whom she delighted to honour, she made Ralph Waldo Emerson—or rather his writings—her oracle. It was somewhat curious that Patricia’s religion always concentrated itself around some person, yet she did not seek to render her homage to a personal God. Her only experience of Christianity other than Romanism was the stern Evangelicism of her old nurse, and this creed, with its narrow interpretations and material heaven, she found equally as repellent as the former. Although not lacking in spiritual perception, she had not yet rightly understood the divine personality of the Incarnate Deity; she admired Christ, it is true, but in the same way she admired Gautama—the founder of Buddhism—and Confucius. To her, the heaven of the Christian and the Nirvana of the Buddhist were almost synonymous terms; and the gospel of right living the only one that was necessary. So that when her lover suggested with much diffidence that she should become a member of his own faith, she did not meet his proposal with the firm refusal he had anticipated.
They were sitting under the trees in one of the quietest spots in Kensington Gardens, glad to escape for the moment from the din and roar of the traffic. Although late autumn, the air was mild and dry, and Patricia allowed her sables to fall from her shoulders and to rest on the back of the chair. She listened to her lover’s words with animation in her face, and wonder in her eyes; she could not make an immediate reply.
“The idea is so curious, so difficult to grasp,” she said, when he had finished. “Judaism seems so formidable to the uninitiated. I am afraid I should break the laws a hundred times a day.”
“I do not think you would. Judaism does not demand so much from a woman as from a man. All a Jewess has to do is to see that her mènage is ordered in accordance with Jewish law, and to bring up her children in the Jewish faith. More will not be expected of you than that; and as we can have a Jewish housekeeper, you need not be worried with the details of the dietary and other laws.”
“But what of my own personal religion?”
“As long as you keep to Theism—the absolute Unity—you can believe what you please,” Montella replied. “So you see your Judaism need not be so difficult after all.”