So it was that Carlisle, gripping fast to poor Miller's machine, heard an odd noise behind her, and turned with a sickening dropping of the heart. Five yards away a girl gave a little moan and flopped forward upon her machine. She was a fine, strapping young creature, and it is certain that two minutes before nothing had been further from her mind than fainting. It did not stop there. Far up the room a "wrapper" rose in the dense air, took her head in both hands and fell backward into the arms of the operative next her. In the extreme corner of the great room a little stir indicated that another had gone down there. Work had almost ceased. Many eyes stared with sudden nervous apprehension into other eyes, as if to say: Am I to be the next? MacQueen's voice rang out-a fine voice it was, the kind that makes people sit down again in a fire-scared theatre: "Take your seats, every one of you. . . . Nothing's going to happen. You're all right, I say. Go on with your work. Sit down. Get to work. . . "Air," said Cally Heth, in a small colorless voice. Hugo wheeled sharply. "Great heavens!-Carlisle! Do you feel faint? " He had her at the open window in a trice, clasping her arm tight, speaking masculine encouragement. dear! I should have watched you. "Hold hard, my Now, breathe His beloved, indeed, like the work-sisters, had felt the brush of the black wing. For an instant nothing had seemed surer than that the daughter of the Works would be the fifth girl to faint in the bunching-room that day; she had seen the floor rise under her whirling vision. . But once at the window the dark minute passed speedily. The keen October air bore the gift of life. Blood trickled back into the dead white cheeks. “I . . . was just a little dizzy," said Cally, quite apologetically. And, though the visitors departed then, almost immediately, all signs of the sudden little panic in the bunching-room were already rapidly disappearing. Work proceeded. The gaunt girl Miller, who had earned MacQueen's permanent dislike by starting all the trouble, was observed sitting again at her machine, hands and feet reaching out for the accustomed levers. A PRINTING-OFFICE BY ARNOLD BENNETT I DARIUS CLAYHANGER'S printing-office was a fine example of the policy of makeshift which governed and still governs the commercial activity of the Five Towns. It consisted of the first floor of a nondescript building which stood at the bottom of the irregularly shaped yard behind the house and shop, and which formed the southern boundary of the Clayhanger premises. The antique building had once been part of an old-fashioned pot-works, but that must have been in the eighteenth century. Kilns and chimneys of all ages, sizes and tints rose behind it to prove that this part of the town was one of the old manufacturing quarters. The ground floor of the building, entirely inaccessible from Clayhanger's yard, had a separate entrance of its own in an alley, that branched off from Woodisun Bank, ran parallel to Wedgwood Street and stopped abruptly at the back gate of a saddler's workshop. In the narrow entry you were like a creeping animal amid the undergrowth of a forest of chimneys, ovens and high blank walls. This ground floor had been a stable for many years; it was now, however, a baker's store-room. Once there had been an interior staircase leading from the ground floor to the first floor, but it had been suppressed in order to save floor space, and an exterior staircase constructed with its foot in Clayhanger's yard. To meet the requirement of the staircase one of the first-floor windows had been transformed into a door. Further, as the staircase came against one of the ground-floor windows, and as Clayhanger's predecessor had objected to those alien windows overlooking his yard, and as numerous windows were anyhow unnecessary to a stable, all the ground-floor windows had been closed up, with oddments of brick and tile, giving to the wall a very variegated and chequered appearance. Thus the ground floor and the first floor were absolutely divorced, the former having its entrance and light from the public alley, the latter from the private yard. From Clayhanger, by Arnold Bennett. Copyright, 1910, George H. Doran, Publisher. The first floor had been a printing-office for over seventy years. All the machinery in it had had to be maneuvered up the rickety stairs or put through one of the windows on either side of the window that had been turned into a door. When Darius Clayhanger, in his audacity, decided to print by steam, many people imagined that he would at last be compelled to rent the ground floor or to take other premises. But no! The elasticity of the makeshift policy was not yet fully stretched. Darius, in consultation with a jobbing builder, came happily to the conclusion that he could " manage," that he could "make things do," by adding to the top of his stairs a little landing for an engine-shed. This was done, and the engine and boiler perched in the air; the shaft of the engine went through the wall; the chimney-pipe of the boiler ran up straight to the level of the roof-ridge and was stayed with pieces of wire. A new chimney had also been pierced in the middle of the roof, for the uses of a heating stove. The original chimneys had been allowed to fall into decay. Finally, a new large skylight added interest to the roof. In a general way, the building resembled a suit of clothes that had been worn during four of the seven ages of man by an untidy husband with a tidy and economical wife, and then given by the wife to a poor relation of a somewhat different figure, to finish. All that could be said of it was that it survived and served. But these considerations occurred to nobody. II Edwin Clayhanger left the shop without due excuse and passed down the long blue-paved yard towards the printing-office. He imagined that he was being drawn thither simply by his own curiosity -a curiosity, however, which he considered to be justifiable, and even laudable. The yard showed signs that the unusual had lately been happening there. Its brick pavement, in the narrow branch of it that led to the double gates in Woodisun Bank (those gates which said to the casual visitor, "No admittance except on Business "), was muddy, littered and damaged, as though a Juggernaut had passed that way. Ladders reclined against the walls. Moreover, one of the windows of the office had been taken out of its frame, leaving naught but an oblong aperture. Through this aperture Edwin could see the busy eager forms of his father, Big James, and Chawner. Through this aperture had been lifted, in parts and by the employment of every possible combination of lever and pulley, the printing machine which Darius Clayhanger had so successfully purchased in Manchester on the day of the Free-and-Easy at the Dragon. At the top of the flight of steps two apprentices, one nearly "out of his time," were ministering to the engine, which that morning did not happen to be running. The engine, giving glory to the entire establishment by virtue of the imposing word "steam," was a crotchety and capricious thing, constant only in its tendency to break down. No more reliance could be placed on it than on a pampered donkey. Sometimes it would run, and sometimes it would not run, but nobody could safely prophesy its moods. Of the several machines it drove but one, the grand cylinder, the last triumph of the ingenuity of man, and even that had to be started by hand before the engine would consent to work it. The staff hated the engine, except during those rare hours when one of its willing moods coincided with a pressure of business. Then, when the steam was sputtering and the smoke smoking and the piston throbbing, and the leathern belt traveling round and round and the complete building a-tremble and a-clatter and an attendant with clean hands was feeding the sheets at one end of the machine and another attendant with clean hands taking them off at the other, all at the rate of twenty copies per sixty seconds-then the staff loved the engine and meditated upon the wonders of their modern civilization. The engine had been known to do its five thousand in an afternoon, and its horse-power was only one. III Edwin could not keep out of the printing-office. He went inconspicuously and as it were by accident up the stone steps and disappeared into the interior. When you entered the office you were first of all impressed by the multiplicity of odors competing for your attention, the chief among them being those of ink, oil, and paraffin. Despite the fact that the door was open and one window gone, the smell and heat in the office on that warm morning were notable. Old sheets of the "Manchester Examiner" had been pinned over the skylight to keep out the sun, but as these were torn and rent the sun was not kept out. Nobody, however, seemed to suffer inconvenience. After the odors, the remarkable feature of the place was the quantity of machinery on its uneven floor. Timid employes had occasionally suggested to Darius that the floor might yield one day and add themselves and all the machinery to the baker's stores below; but Darius knew that floors never did yield. In the middle of the floor was a huge and heavy heating stove, whose pipe ran straight upwards to the visible roof. The mighty cylinder machine stood to the left hand. Behind was a small roughand-ready binding department with a guillotine cutting machine; a cardboard cutting machine, and a perforating machine; trifles by the side of the cylinder, but still each of them formidable masses of metal heavy enough to crush a horse; the cutting machines might have served to illustrate the French Revolution, and the perforating machine the Holy Inquisition. Then there was what was called in the office the "old machine," a relic of Clayhanger's predecessor, and at least eighty years old. It was one of those machines whose worn physiognomies full of character show at once that they have a history. In construction it carried solidity to an absurd degree. Its pillars were like the piles of a pier. Once, in a historic rat-catching, a rat had got up one of them, and a piece of smouldering brown paper had done what a terrier could not do. The machine at one period of its career had been enlarged, and the neat seaming of the metal was an ecstasy to the eye of a good workman. Long ago, it was known, this machine had printed a Reform newspaper at Stockport. Now, after thus participating in the violent politics of an age heroic and unhappy, it had been put to printing small posters of auctions and tea-meetings. Its movement was double, first that of a handle to bring the bed under the platen, and second a lever pulled over to make contact between the type and the paper. It still worked perfectly. It was so solid, and it had been so honestly made, that it could never get out of order nor wear away. And indeed the conscientiousness and skill of artificers in the eighteenth century are still, through that resistless machine, producing their effect in the twentieth. But it needed a strong hand to bestir its smooth plum-colored limbs of metal, and a speed of a hundred an hour meant gentle perspiration. The machine was loved like an animal. Near this honorable and lumbering survival stood pertly an Empire treadle-machine for printing envelopes and similar trifles. It was new and full of natty little devices. It worked with the lightness of |