In fact, poor Joanna was deprived of the spectacle she had looked
forward to with such zest--that of a parish made to amend itself while
she looked on from the detachment of her own high standard. She was made
to feel just as uncomfortable as any wicked old man or giggling
hussy.... She was all the more aggrieved because, though Mr. Palmer had
displeased her, she could not get rid of him as she would have got rid
of her looker in the same circumstances. "If I take a looker and he
don't please me I can sack him--the gal I engage I can get shut of at a
month's warning, but a parson seemingly is the only kind you can put in
and not put out."
Then to crown all, he took away the Lion and the Unicorn from their
eternal dance above the Altar of God, and in their place he put tall
candles, casting queer red gleams into daylight.... Joanna could bear no
more; she swallowed the pride which for the first few months of
innovation had made her treat the new rector merely with distant
rudeness, and descended upon him in the three rooms of Brodnyx Rectory
which he inhabited with cheerful contempt for the rest of its howling
vastness.
She emerged from the encounter strangely subdued. Mr. Palmer had been
polite, even sympathetic, but he had plainly shown her the indifference
(to use no cruder term) that he felt for her as an ecclesiastical
authority. He was not going to put the Lion and the Unicorn back in
their old place, they belonged to a bygone age which was now forgotten,
to a bad old language which had lost its meaning. The utmost he would do
was to consent to hang them up over the door, so that they could bless
Joanna's going out and coming in. With this she had to be content.
Poor Joanna! The episode was more than a passing outrage and
humiliation--it was ominous, it gave her a queer sense of downfall.
With her beloved symbol something which was part of herself seemed also
to have been dispossessed. She became conscious that she was losing
authority. She realized that for long she had been weakening in regard
to Ellen, and now she was unable to stand up to this heavy, sleek young
man whom her patronage had appointed.... The Lion and the Unicorn had
from childhood been her sign of power--they were her theology in
oleograph, they stood for the Church of England as by law established,
large rectory houses, respectable and respectful clergymen, "dearly
beloved brethren" on Sunday mornings, and a nice nap after dinner. And
now they were gone, and in their place was a queer Jesuitry of kyries
and candles, and a gospel which kicked and goaded and would not allow
one to sleep....
Sec.7
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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