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You know he's terribly mashed on you. He thinks you are about the best thing going. Materna, now you dress up awfully, won't you? I want you to take the shine out of everybody else. I'm going to wear my dress suit," he encouraged her. "Why, say!" he interrupted himself, "that's funny Blair didn't tell me he had asked you." "Mrs. Maitland asked me." "Mrs. Maitland!"
Elizabeth did know him, but even to her the ensuing explanation, which did not explain, was, through his very anxiety not to offend her, provokingly laconic. "But you don't go on duty at the hospital until April," she said hotly. "Why do you leave Mercer the first of March?" "Materna wants time to get settled." "Mrs.
He was keenly disturbed, but as the door closed upon Elizabeth he spoke quietly enough: "You are very tired, Materna; don't let's get to discussing things tonight. I'll bring you something to eat, and then you must go up to your room." "There is nothing to discuss, David," she said; "of course Elizabeth ought not to have come down here to you. But I am here. To-morrow she will go home with me."
David interrupted her passionately; of course it might be pleasanter for Materna to get away from old Ferguson; but what is a man's mother, compared with his girl! Elizabeth's pain was intolerable to him. "I won't leave you a day before I have to!" For a moment her wet eyes smiled. "Indeed you shall; I may be wicked oh, I am! but I am not really an idiot.
But we have had Materna and Niemann and Brandt and Fischer, and Alvary and Lehmann, who have given us correct ideas of the German vocal style. Surely no one can say, on listening to Lehmann's Brünnhilde, or Fischer's Hans Sachs, or Alvary's Siegfried, that the vocal part is inferior in beauty or importance to the orchestral.
For years he never gave a concert without having at least one Wagner selection on the programme, no matter how much some of the critics and patrons protested. In 1884 he considered the public sufficiently weaned of Italian sweets to stand a strong dose of Wagner; so he imported the three leading singers of the Bayreuth festivals Materna, Winkelmann, and Scaria for a number of festival concerts.
He cried hard, like a child: "Materna!" And so it was that he arose and went to his mother. When, after his interview with David, Robert Ferguson went into Mrs. Maitland's office at the Works, he looked older by twenty years than when he had left it the night before. Sarah Maitland, sitting at her desk, heard his step, and wheeled round to greet him.
Materna, there are several things you can't understand and I shouldn't like it if you could!" he said, his face sobering with that reverent look which a man gives only to his mother; "There is the old human instinct, that existed before laws or morals or anything else, the man's instinct to keep his woman.
She had sunk back in her chair with a blanched face. She said, faintly, "David!" "Don't let's talk about it, Materna," he said, pitifully. He could not bear to look at her; it seemed as if she had grown suddenly old; she was broken, haggard, with appalled eyes and trembling lips. "You don't understand," David said, greatly distressed. Helena Richie put her hands over her face. "Don't I?" she said.
David put his head down on his arms on the railing and stood motionless for a long moment. When he reached home, he found his mother in the twilight, in the little garden behind the house. David, standing behind her, said carelessly, "I have some news for you, Materna." "Yes?" she said, absorbed in pinching back her lemon verbena. "Blair is is spoony over Elizabeth.
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