His time being out, he had 'worked in the shop'
at weekly wages seven or eight years more; and had then betaken
himself to the banks of the Clyde, where he had studied, and filed, and
hammered, and improved his knowledge, theoretical and practical, for six
or seven years more. There he had had an offer to go to Lyons, which he
had accepted; and from Lyons had been engaged to go to Germany, and in
Germany had had an offer to go to St Petersburg, and there had done very
well indeed--never better. However, he had naturally felt a preference
for his own country, and a wish to gain distinction there, and to do
whatever service he could do, there rather than elsewhere. And so he had
come home. And so at home he had established himself in business, and
had invented and executed, and worked his way on, until, after a dozen
years of constant suit and service, he had been enrolled in the
Great British Legion of Honour, the Legion of the Rebuffed of the
Circumlocution Office, and had been decorated with the Great British
Order of Merit, the Order of the Disorder of the Barnacles and
Stiltstalkings.
'It is much to be regretted,' said Clennam, 'that you ever turned your
thoughts that way, Mr Doyce.' 'True, sir, true to a certain extent. But what is a man to do? if he
has the misfortune to strike out something serviceable to the nation,
he must follow where it leads him.' 'Hadn't he better let it go?' said
Clennam. 'He can't do it,' said Doyce, shaking his head with a thoughtful smile.
'It's not put into his head to be buried. It's put into his head to be
made useful. You hold your life on the condition that to the last you
shall struggle hard for it. Every man holds a discovery on the same
terms.'
'That is to say,' said Arthur, with a growing admiration of his quiet
companion, 'you are not finally discouraged even now?'
'I have no right to be, if I am,' returned the other. 'The thing is as
true as it ever was.' When they had walked a little way in silence, Clennam, at once to
change the direct point of their conversation and not to change it
too abruptly, asked Mr Doyce if he had any partner in his business to
relieve him of a portion of its anxieties?
'No,' he returned, 'not at present. I had when I first entered on it,
and a good man he was. But he has been dead some years; and as I could
not easily take to the notion of another when I lost him, I bought
his share for myself and have gone on by myself ever since. And here's
another thing,' he said, stopping for a moment with a good-humoured
laugh in his eyes, and laying his closed right hand, with its peculiar
suppleness of thumb, on Clennam's arm, 'no inventor can be a man of
business, you know.'