What times the two had then! "Hah! th' play's the thing!" he'd cry, stirred, his face alight at some rousing scene that had depicted virtue victorious and villainy put to rout. "Hah, I told you so!" It made Bab smile to see him. On the other hand, if on the stage things went wrong with some poor girl or some noble fellow was in jeopardy, Mr. Mapy would sit almost breathless, silenced, waiting until all was well. Bab more than once had seen the tears steal down the little man's gray face. However, once the suspense had passed, once all was as it should be, Mr. Mapy, his spirits rising at a bound, would bubble with animation. "Great! Wasn't it great! Was ever anything so fine!" For a week he and Bab would talk it over, discussing every scene; then the Saturday half-holiday would come again, and there would be another matinée.
Little wonder Mr. Mapy so eagerly waited from week to week. It was his joy. It was the one great, true pleasure of that marred, broken life of his. And when heads began to turn, eyes to glance, lighting with admiration at the slim, tender girl, the young woman now, who went with him on these Saturdays, little Mr. Mapleson's heart fairly bounded, swelling with pride, with loving satisfaction.
Of all the days that's in the week
I dearly love but one day——
If he who wrote that ballad had only made it Saturday!
So thought John Mapleson at any rate. So, too, in the passage of all those years, never once had he let anything stand in the way of that holiday. There was Bab, hanging over the gate, waiting in her pigtails to wave to him. Then there was the stilty-legged little Bab riding the gilded carrousel, scream-ing with delight when she speared the treasured brass ring. And then, finally, there was Bab the blue-eyed and slender, the white-faced little old man's charming companion—the Bab whom people, smiling in admiration, turned their heads to see. All these, Mr. Mapy! Yes, but where was Bab now? It was a Saturday, yet she was not with him. He wondered with a rising terror what had happened. Where was she? What had befallen her?
He was still sitting there, his chin fallen on his breast, when he heard Varick's step upon the stair. A moment later there came his knock. With trembling knees the little man arose, and shambling across the room, he unlocked and opened the door.
"Well?" he asked monotonously.
In the week, the few days that had intervened since the night when he had dragged out of Mr. Mapleson his story, Varick's anger at the little man had drained itself away. For what good now could anger do? After all, too, if it were indeed forgery that Mr. Mapleson had set his hand to, there was no meanness in that fraud. It was merely the impulse of an unbalanced mind. Varick, after he had closed the door behind him, walked quietly across the room. Mr. Mapleson at his approach turned to him, trembling.
"What do you want?" he asked. "I have told you everything, haven't I?"
"Listen to me," said Varick. "There was a man here yesterday to see me, and I want to know why. You're not hiding anything, are you? Have these people uptown found out?"