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Every court and alley whispers of books and of the making of books; forms of type, trundled noisily on trollies by ink-smeared boys, salute the wayfarer at odd corners; piles of strawboard, rolls or bales of paper, drums of printing-ink or roller-composition stand on the pavement outside dark entries; basement windows give glimpses into Hadean caverns tenanted by legions of printer's devils; and the very air is charged with the hum of press and with odours of glue and paste and oil.
Sir Marmaduke paused a moment under the lintel which dominated the broad entrance. His eyes had some difficulty in penetrating the density which seemed drawn across the place on his left like some ink-smeared and opaque curtain. The men assembled outside, watched him from a distance with silent respect.
The place, with its ink-smeared walls and high ceilings, spoke between dusty yawns of the languor and the leisure which might attend the manipulation of the business of life, and Hilda paused for an instant to perceive what it said.
When one danced with them, their bodies never moved inside their clothes; their muscles seemed to ask but one thing not to be disturbed. I remember those girls merely as faces in the schoolroom, gay and rosy, or listless and dull, cut off below the shoulders, like cherubs, by the ink-smeared tops of the high desks that were surely put there to make us round-shouldered and hollow-chested.
"Da," pointed the captain triumphantly, pointing the line out, with his great, hairy forefinger ... and, with victory near, relapsing into German. But, just as it reached the designated spot, the fellow gave a violent swish with the pen. The mates made a grab for his hand, but too late. He tore a great, ink-smeared rent through the paper.... Whang!
A boy with an ink-smeared face was setting type and a pallid gentleman with glasses was languidly working a hand-press. A pile of fresh-smelling papers lay on a table, and after a question or two he picked up one. Two of its four pages were covered with announcements of suits and sales to satisfy judgments the printing of which was the raison d'etre of the noble sheet.
The place, with its ink-smeared walls and high ceilings, spoke between dusty yawns of the langour and the leisure which might attend the manipulation of the business of life, and Hilda paused for an instant to perceive what it said.
And he was breathless with excitement; when he reached the small editorial chamber at the top of a dark, narrow flight of stairs, wherein sat the autocratic Snawley, smiling suavely over a heap of letters and disordered MSS. He glanced at the card which his ink-smeared attendant presented him. "Ah, indeed!" he said condescendingly. "Lovelace Lovelace?
"You've found him!" she exclaimed as she glimpsed his face when he entered the hall. Caleb shook his head, his heart aching at the hunger in her question. "No, I haven't found him, Sarah," he said gently enough. "But I I've found out who he is!" They forgot their supper that night. With heads close together they hung for hours over the ink-smeared sheaf of papers which the tin box yielded up.
He was in print, and to be in print for the first time is to experience as fine a delirium as is to be found in love or liquor. The typed column ravished his senses, and the editorial 'we' looked imperial. He was 'we' in spite of shirt-sleeves and ink-smeared apron of herden.
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