He saw the self-confidence of Gloucester supremely justified: the satiric farce marched steadily, scene by scene, to a success that was to keep it on Broadway through the winter and make the name of Joan Thursday a house-hold word throughout the Union. Her personal success was as unquestionable as her beauty; she played with grace, vivacity, charm, and distinction; and only to the initiate of the theatre was it apparent that Gloucester had found in her the perfect medium for the transmission of his art. Matthias could see, in company with a few of the more discriminating and stage-wise, that she employed not a gesture, intonation or bit of business which had not originated with Gloucester; she brought to her rôle on her part nothing but beauty and an unshakable self-confidence so thoroughly ingrained that it escaped suggesting self-consciousness. The triumph was, rightly, first Gloucester's, then the play's; but the public acclaimed the actress, and the one acidulated critic who hailed her, the following morning, as "at last!—the perfect human kinetophone record!" was listened to by none, least of all by the subject of his sarcasm. Marbridge, in a stage box, led the applause at the conclusion of each act; and at the end of the play Arlington came in person before the curtain, leading by the hand the gracefully reluctant Joan, and in a few suave sentences thanked the audience for its appreciation and a beneficent Providence for granting him this opportunity of fixing a new star in the theatrical firmament: the name of "this little girl," he promised (bowing to Joan) would appear in letters of fire over the theatre, the next night....
Pausing in the lobby to light a cigarette before leaving, Matthias overheard one of Arlington's lieutenants confiding to another the news of the ruinous failure of the third initial production of that night.
Half an hour later he met Wilbrow by appointment in a quiet, non-theatrical club, and received from him confirmation of rumours which had already reached him of his own triumph with "Tomorrow's People."
"You're a made man now," Wilbrow told him with sincere good will and some little honest envy; "by tomorrow morning the pack will be at your heels, yapping for a chance to put on every old 'script in your trunk."
"I suppose so," Matthias nodded soberly.
"But there's one comfort about that," Wilbrow pursued cheerfully: "whatever the temptation, you won't give 'em anything but sound, sane, workmanlike stuff. You've proved yourself one of the two or three, at most, playwrights in this country who are able to think and to make an audience think without losing sight of the fact that, in the last analysis, 'the play's the thing.' We've got plenty of authors nowadays who can turn out first-chop melodrama, and we've got a respectable percentage of 'em who write plays so full of honest and intelligent thought that it gives the average manager a headache to look at the 'script; but the men who can give us the sort of drama that not only makes you think but holds you on the front edge of your seat waiting to see what's coming next.... Well, they're few and far between, and you're one of 'em, and I'm proud to have had a hand in putting you before the public!"
"You've got nothing on me, there," Matthias grinned: "I'm proud you had. And if I can get my own way after this—"
"You don't need to join the I-Should-Worries on account of that!"
"You'll be the only man who will ever produce one of my plays."
Between one o'clock and two they parted. Matthias trudged home, completely fagged in body, but with a buoyant heart to sustain him.