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.
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