The same message or better came after the other acts. But he would not believe, he dared not believe, till suddenly Sheila was there in her costume of the last act. The divine light of good news poured from her eyes. She had not waited to meet the people who crowded back to congratulate her—“and they never crowd after a failure,” she said.
She had not waited to change her costume lest she be too late with her music. She had waited only for Bret to run to her and tell her how wonderful she was, and to crush him as hard as she could in her arms. Then she had haled him to the cab that was held in readiness, and they had dashed for Vickery’s bed—his “throne,” she called it.
Perhaps she exaggerated the excitement of the audience; perhaps she drew a little on prophecy in quoting what the critics had been overheard to say in praise of the drama—“epoch-making” was the least word she quoted.
But she brought in with her a very blast of beauty and of rapture, and she carried flowers that she would have flung across his bed if she had not suddenly feared the look of them there.
As for Vickery, he felt the beauty and fragrance of the triumphal red roses on the towering stems.
But he closed the great eyelids over the great eyes and inhaled the sweeter, the ineffable aroma of success. It was so sweet that he turned his face to the wall and sobbed.
Sheila tried to console him—console him for his triumph! She said: “Why, ’Gene, ’Gene, the play is a sensation! The royalties will be enormous. The notices will be glorious. You mustn’t be unhappy.”
He put out a hand that tried to be soft, he made a sound that tried to be a laugh, and he spoke in a sad rustle that tried to be a voice:
“I’m not unhappy. I never was happy till now. The royalties won’t be necessary where I’m going—just a penny to pay the ferryman. The notices I’ll read over there—I suppose they get the papers over there so that the obituary notices can be read—the first kind words some of us ever get from this world.
“I owe it to you two that my play got on and succeeded. Success! to write your heart’s religion and have it succeed with the people—that’s worth living for—that’s worth dying for—”