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But Browett knew, as an evolutionist, that the eagle has a divine right to the lamb if it can come safely off with it; as a Christian, that one carries out the will of God as indubitably in preserving the established order of prince and subject, of noble and plebeian, as in giving of his abundance to relieve the necessitous or in endowing universities which should teach the perpetual sacredness of the established order of things in Church and State.
Cyrus Browett, in whose keeping was the very ark of the money covenant, alighted from his coupé under the porte-cochère of candied Gothic and humbly took seat in his pew like a mere worshipper of God. As such a man among men the young rector looked calmly down upon him, letting him sink into the crowd-entity which always became subject to him.
One of the few fads of Browett being the memorial window, it was also said by enviers that if he would begin to erect a window to every small competitor his Trust had squeezed to death there would be an unprecedented flurry in stained glass.
As they entered the little reception-room from the hall, the doors of the next room were pushed apart and they saw Allan bowing out Mrs. Talwin Covil, a meek, suppressed, neutral-tinted woman, the inevitable feminine corollary of such a man as Cyrus Browett, whose only sister she was.
This was the church and this the patron above all others that the Reverend Allan Delcher Linford would have chosen, and earnestly did he pray that God in His wisdom impart to him the grace to please Browett and those whom Browett permitted to have a nominal voice in the control of St. Antipas. Both Aunt Bell and Nancy came to feel the strain of it all.
If his glance fell, now and then, upon the face of Browett, he saw it only through the haze of his own fervour a patch of granite-gray holding two pricking points of light. Not once was Browett permitted to feel himself more than one of a crowd; not once was he permitted to rise above his mere atomship, nor feel that he received more attention than the humblest worshipper in arrears for pew-rent.
He closed with these words of Voltaire: "We must love our country whatever injustice we suffer in it, as we must love and serve the Supreme Being, notwithstanding the superstitions and fanaticism which so often dishonour His worship." The sermon was no marked achievement in coherence, but neither was Browett a coherent personality.
Even his white moustache, close-clipped as his own hedges, and guarding a stiff, chilled mouth, was a thing grimly repressed, telling that the man was quite invulnerable to his own vanity. A human Browett would have permitted that moustache to mitigate its surroundings with some flowing grace.
"That reminds me," said the Doctor, recalling himself from a downward look at the grovelling Browett, "she made me promise to be in at four o'clock. Really I couldn't evade her it was either four o'clock to-day or the first possible day. What could I do? Aunt Bell, I won't pretend that this being looked up to and sought out is always disagreeable.
"Now I am said to have great influence over women women trust me, believe me I may even say look up to me but I pledge you my word I am conscious of wielding an immensely greater influence over men. There seems to be in my ego the power to prevail. Take Browett most men are afraid of him not physical fear, but their inner selves, their egos, go down before him.
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