CHAPTER V
In the first few months after his success in the University examinations, Cosmo lived a life which should have proved a fitting introduction to the position his father had reserved for him.
With the middle of October he entered the business in Thames Street, and displayed an assiduity delightful for Mr Burden to witness.
The merchant was, indeed, astonished at the aptitude, or, perhaps, the inherited commercial talent, which had survived his son’s philological training, and was at times prepared to admit that the study of modern languages, even upon the side of pure literature, served (as he had often heard from its defenders) for a gymnastic to the growing mind.
Meanwhile, the young man was far from forgetting the pleasures due to his rank; but he used them in such a way that the development of his character was in no way injured. His health forbade excess. His acquaintances ensured, some that his pleasures should be refined, others that they should be energetic, all that they should be well selected. In a word he led, during the happy winter months that followed, the normal life of that class which is perhaps the soundest, as it is certainly the most many-sided in Europe—the class which has learnt to govern an immeasurable realm without corruption, and almost without ambition.
It was remarkable that, in spite of his prospects, he maintained a severe grasp over his private expenditure, and this wise economy helped still further to strengthen a character which might, at first, have shown signs of weakness. He managed to do thoroughly well without a private trap, replacing it by such cabs as his business or amusements demanded. As for riding, one horse sufficed him, and when he visited the country to hunt (as he would occasionally do in the middle of a business week), he was not above jobbing a mount from a local stable; he would not be at the expense of hunters. Did he visit the theatre, the stalls seemed to him his most natural place. He took a box but twice during the whole of that autumn, once when the house was full, and on another occasion when he had calculated that the number of friends whom he could accommodate in this manner would have cost a trifle more had he taken them to separate seats.
At the Empire, the Alhambra, and other music halls he made it a rule to break a sovereign as he entered, and to make that sum suffice him for the whole evening.
He but rarely visited the Savoy, the Carlton, or Prince’s. When he entertained it was at his club, and though he was careful that the wine and cooking should be of the best, yet he abhorred the ostentation of unseasonable flowers, and of vintages whose names might be unfamiliar to his guests. His dress was nearly always new, and always, always quiet. His linen fitted him with exactitude (a result of careful measurement). To his hats he paid that attention which is only to be discovered in men who comprehend the subtle importance of those ornaments.
In everything the management of his affairs displayed a wise reticence and balance; qualities most fortunately bestowed upon him by Providence, when we consider that his father’s old-fashioned standard forbade him an allowance of more than £250 a year.
His life, I say, through all that winter, was at once well-ordered and happy, and justly envied by his contemporaries. There was but one flaw in the perfection of his content, and that flaw was to be discovered in the very serious condition of his finances.