The end of that May did not tempt him to move; he was right on to his business, and never had his silent life been more silent or Maria, Lady Repton, felt more alone, though she did as she was bid and remained immovable in her London house, only seeing, when the leisure was afforded her, her few dear friends (none conspicuous), and once or twice presiding at a great dinner of her husband’s.
Beyond all his other concerns one chief concern was resolving itself in Charles Repton’s head. He was wondering exactly where he stood between commerce and politics.
These moments, not of doubt but of a necessity for decision, are the tests of interior power. Some half-dozen such moments had marked the career of his strict soul: one when he had determined to risk the transition from his native town to Newcastle carefully calculating the capital of clients and how much could be successfully lent in that centre: another, when he had risked the expense of his first election: a third when he had decided to take office—and there were others.
Now as May drew to its close, as the discussion on the Budget was in full swing and as the eager public notice of Van Diemens was on the point of filling the press, he was in some balance as to whether the precise proportion of activity which he gave to the House of Commons—it was a large proportion—might not be absorbing just too much of his energy.
He calculated most exactly—as a man calculates a measurable thing, an acreage, or a weight of metal—what the future proportions should be.
He must remain in touch with everything that passed at Westminster; on that he was fixed. But he knew that there was a growing criticism of his combination of high political idealism with affairs in the City. The Moon had said one exceedingly unpleasant thing about the Oil Concession in Burmah—it was only a newspaper but he had had to settle it. The Capon was paying a little more attention than he liked to his position in the House of Commons.
He thought hard, and under the process of his thought his mind somewhat cleared. But he had come to no decision when, late in the night of Sunday, the 31st of May, he marshalled the papers upon his desk, deliberately turned his mind off the problems that had been engaging him, and drew up a list of his next engagements.
The next day, Monday the 1st of June, after leaving his house punctually at half-past nine, he was to give half the morning to the Wardenship. He was to return home at noon. From noon to lunch he must see to his accounts. It was doubly important, for it was a Monday and it was the first of the month. He would lunch: preferably alone, for he would be tired, and he would give Maria to understand that he must be undisturbed.
On Tuesday, the 2nd, was the speech to the General Meeting of Van Diemens. He glanced at his notes for that speech; they were all in excellent sequence, and he felt, so far as men of that stern temper can feel it, a little touch of pride when he noted the procession of the argument. He saw in his mind’s eye first the conviction and then the enthusiasm of the men whom he must convince: the vivid portrayal of the Empire’s need of the railway: the ease of building it,—the delivery of the great metaphor wherein he compared that thin new line of iron to the electrical connection which turns potential and useless electrical energy into actual and working force.
He re-read the phrase in which he called it “completing the circuit”; he did not doubt at all that the meeting would follow him. Sentence after sentence passed before his memory (for he had carefully learned the peroration by heart); the name of Nelson shone in one of them, the name of Rhodes in another, of Joel in a third, till the great oration closed with a vision, brief, succinct (but how vivid!) of the Gate of the East and of England’s hand upon it, holding