lush
fauteuils cost a shilling, no mean price for a community where seven
pounds of potatoes can be bought for sixpence, and the view of the
stage therefrom was perfect. But the Alderman's view was far from
perfect, since he had to peer as best he could between and above the
shoulders of several men, each apparently, but not really, taller than
himself. By constant slight movements, to comply with the movements
of the rampart of shoulders, he could discern fragments of various
advertisements of soap, motor-cars, whisky, shirts, perfume, pills,
bricks and tea--for the drop-curtain was down. And, curiously, he
felt obliged to keep his eyes on the drop-curtain and across the long
intervening vista of hats and heads and smoke to explore its most
difficult corners again and again, lest when it went up he might not
be in proper practice for seeing what was behind it.

Nevertheless, despite the marked inconveniences of his situation,
he felt brighter, he felt almost happy in this dense atmosphere of
success. He even found a certain peculiar and perverse satisfaction in
the fact that he had as yet been recognized by nobody. Once or twice
the owners of shoulders had turned and deliberately glared at the
worrying fellow who had the impudence to be all the time peeping over
them and between them; they had not distinguished the fellow from any
ordinary fellow. Could they have known that he was the famous Alderman
Edward Henry Machin, founder and sole proprietor of the Thrift Club,
into which their wives were probably paying so much a week, they would
most assuredly have glared to another tune, and they would have said
with pride afterwards: "That chap Machin o'Bursley was standing behind
me at the Empire to-night!" And though Machin is amongst the commonest
names in the Five Towns, all would have known that the great and
admired Denry was meant ... It was astonishing that a personage so
notorious should not have been instantly "spotted" in such a resort
as the Empire. More proof that the Five Towns was a vast and seething
concentration of cities, and no longer a mere district where everybody
knew everybody!

The curtain rose, and as it did so a thunderous, crashing applause
of greeting broke forth; applause that thrilled and impressed and
inspired; applause that made every individual in the place feel right
glad that he was there. For the curtain had risen on the gigantic
attraction, which many members of the audience were about