“Yes,” he thought, “what I want is change—­and a lot of it, too!”

CHAPTER II

THE BANK-NOTE

I

Alderman Machin had to stand at the back, and somewhat towards the side, of that part of the auditorium known as the Grand Circle at the Empire Music Hall, Hanbridge.  The attendants at the entrance, and in the lounge, where the salutation “Welcome” shone in electricity over a large cupid-surrounded mirror, had compassionately and yet exultingly told him that there was not a seat left in the house.  He had shared their exultation.  He had said to himself, full of honest pride in the Five Towns:  “This music-hall, admitted by the press to be one of the finest in the provinces, holds over two thousand five hundred people.  And yet we can fill it to overflowing twice every night!  And only a few years ago there wasn’t a decent music-hall in the entire district!”

The word “Progress” flitted through his head.

It was not strictly true that the Empire was or could be filled to overflowing twice every night, but it was true that at that particular moment not a seat was unsold; and the aspect of a crowded auditorium is apt to give an optimistic quality to broad generalizations.  Alderman Machin began instinctively to calculate the amount of money in the house, and to wonder whether there would be a chance for a second music-hall in the dissipated town of Hanbridge.  He also wondered why the idea of a second music-hall in Hanbridge had never occurred to him before.

The Grand Circle was so called because it was grand.  Its plush 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