'Upon which,' said Mr Meagles, 'as a practical man, I then and there, in
that presence, took Doyce by the collar, and told him it was plain to
me that he was an infamous rascal and treasonable disturber of the
government peace, and took him away. I brought him out of the office
door by the collar, that the very porter might know I was a practical
man who appreciated the official estimate of such characters; and here
we are!' If that airy young Barnacle had been there, he would have frankly told
them perhaps that the Circumlocution Office had achieved its function.
That what the Barnacles had to do, was to stick on to the national ship
as long as they could. That to trim the ship, lighten the ship, clean
the ship, would be to knock them off; that they could but be knocked off
once; and that if the ship went down with them yet sticking to it, that
was the ship's look out, and not theirs.
'There!' said Mr Meagles, 'now you know all about Doyce. Except, which I
own does not improve my state of mind, that even now you don't hear him
complain.' 'You must have great patience,' said Arthur Clennam, looking at him with
some wonder, 'great forbearance.' 'No,' he returned, 'I don't know that I have more than another man.' 'By the Lord, you have more than I have, though!' cried Mr Meagles.
Doyce smiled, as he said to Clennam, 'You see, my experience of these
things does not begin with myself. It has been in my way to know a
little about them from time to time. Mine is not a particular case. I am
not worse used than a hundred others who have put themselves in the same
position--than all the others, I was going to say.'
'I don't know that I should find that a consolation, if it were my case;
but I am very glad that you do.' 'Understand me! I don't say,' he replied in his steady, planning
way, and looking into the distance before him as if his grey eye were
measuring it, 'that it's recompense for a man's toil and hope; but it's
a certain sort of relief to know that I might have counted on this.'
He spoke in that quiet deliberate manner, and in that undertone, which
is often observable in mechanics who consider and adjust with great
nicety. It belonged to him like his suppleness of thumb, or his peculiar
way of tilting up his hat at the back every now and then, as if he were
contemplating some half-finished work of his hand and thinking about it.