The Cost of Kindness | Page 4

of the
congregation who, he hoped, would one day be sorry for the
misunderstandings they had caused, brethren whom it was his duty to
forgive, he had assumed the parishioners of St. Jude's,
Wychwood-on-the-Heath, to have taken a personal dislike to him. He
wished to publicly apologize for the injustice he had unwittingly done
to their heads and to their hearts. He now had it from their own lips that
a libel had been put upon them. So far from their wishing his departure,
it was self-evident that his going would inflict upon them a great
sorrow. With the knowledge he now possessed of the respect--one
might almost say the veneration--with which the majority of that
congregation regarded him--knowledge, he admitted, acquired
somewhat late--it was clear to him he could still be of help to them in
their spiritual need. To leave a flock so devoted would stamp him as an
unworthy shepherd. The ceaseless stream of regrets at his departure that
had been poured into his ear during the last four days he had decided at
the last moment to pay heed to. He would remain with them--on one
condition.
There quivered across the sea of humanity below him a movement that
might have suggested to a more observant watcher the convulsive
clutchings of some drowning man at some chance straw. But the Rev.
Augustus Cracklethorpe was thinking of himself.
The parish was large and he was no longer a young man. Let them
provide him with a conscientious and energetic curate. He had such a
one in his mind's eye, a near relation of his own, who, for a small
stipend that was hardly worth mentioning, would, he knew it for a fact,
accept the post. The pulpit was not the place in which to discuss these
matters, but in the vestry afterwards he would be pleased to meet such
members of the congregation as might choose to stay.

The question agitating the majority of the congregation during the
singing of the hymn was the time it would take them to get outside the
church. There still remained a faint hope that the Rev. Augustus
Cracklethorpe, not obtaining his curate, might consider it due to his
own dignity to shake from his feet the dust of a parish generous in
sentiment, but obstinately close-fisted when it came to putting its hands
into its pockets.
But for the parishioners of St. Jude's that Sunday was a day of
misfortune. Before there could be any thought of moving, the Rev.
Augustus raised his surpliced arm and begged leave to acquaint them
with the contents of a short note that had just been handed up to him. It
would send them all home, he felt sure, with joy and thankfulness in
their hearts. An example of Christian benevolence was among them
that did honour to the Church.
Here a retired wholesale clothier from the East-end of London--a short,
tubby gentleman who had recently taken the Manor House--was
observed to turn scarlet.
A gentleman hitherto unknown to them had signalled his advent among
them by an act of munificence that should prove a shining example to
all rich men. Mr. Horatio Copper--the reverend gentleman found some
difficulty, apparently, in deciphering the name.
"Cooper-Smith, sir, with an hyphen," came in a thin whisper, the voice
of the still scarlet-faced clothier.
Mr. Horatio Cooper-Smith, taking--the Rev. Augustus felt confident--a
not unworthy means of grappling to himself thus early the hearts of his
fellow-townsmen, had expressed his desire to pay for the expense of a
curate entirely out of his own pocket. Under these circumstances, there
would be no further talk of a farewell between the Rev. Augustus
Cracklethorpe and his parishioners. It would be the hope of the Rev.
Augustus Cracklethorpe to live and die the pastor of St. Jude's.
A more solemn-looking, sober congregation than the congregation that
emerged that Sunday morning from St. Jude's in

Wychwood-on-the-Heath had never, perhaps, passed out of a church
door.
"He'll have more time upon his hands," said Mr. Biles, retired
wholesale ironmonger and junior churchwarden, to Mrs. Biles, turning
the corner of Acacia Avenue--"he'll have more time to make himself a
curse and a stumbling-block."
"And if this 'near relation' of his is anything like him--"
"Which you may depend upon it is the Case, or he'd never have thought
of him," was the opinion of Mr. Biles.
"I shall give that Mrs. Pennycoop," said Mrs. Biles, "a piece of my
mind when I meet her."
But of what use was that?
*** End of Project Gutenberg etext of The Cost of Kindness ***

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