Matthias waited a trifle longer, as though anticipating trouble with the disappointed players; but there was no feeling manifest in their attitude toward him other than sympathy for a fellow-sufferer. And presently he consulted his watch and followed the stage-director.
Those left in the theatre discussed the contretemps in subdued and regretful accents, betraying surprisingly little rancour toward anyone connected with it. Even Rideout escaped with slight censure. He was, in the final analysis, one of them—an incurable optimist who had erred only in banking too heavily on hope and promises.
By twos and threes they gathered up their belongings and straggled off upon their various ways, a sorry, philosophic crew. Within ten minutes their dissociation was final and absolute.
XVII
Late in the evening, Matthias gave it up, and shaking off Rideout (whose only hope had resided in the author's anxiety to save his play) betook himself to an out-of-the-way restaurant to idle with a tasteless meal.
He was at once dog-weary and heart-sick.
The net outcome of some ten hours of runnings to and from, of meetings and schemings, of conferences by telephone and of communications by telegraph with those who had promised financial support to Rideout's project, was an empty assurance, indifferently given by the Shuberts, to the effect that, if nothing happened to make them think otherwise, they might possibly be prepared to consider the advisability of producing "The Jade God" about the first of January.
The truth of the situation was that neither the Shuberts nor any other managerial concern was likely (as Wilbrow put it) "to look cross-eyed at the piece" until they could get full control of it; which would be in some three months, when Rideout's contract to produce would expire by limitation. And since Rideout might be counted upon to hold on to his contract rights till the last minute and leave nothing else undone in the effort to recoup his already substantial losses, it was useless to consider the play as anything but a property of potential value relegated indefinitely to abeyance.
Matthias believed in the play with all his heart. During the last three weeks he had watched it come to life and assume the form he had dreamed for it, coloured with the rich hues of his imagination and quick with the breath of living drama. And because he possessed in some measure that rare faculty of being able to weigh justly the work of his own hand, and had looked upon this and seen that it was good, he had counted on it to win him that recognition which, more than money, his pride craved—partly by way of some compensation for what it had suffered at the hands of Venetia Tankerville.