第55章

Five minutes later, Tom Thurston entered, and Julia Monson came down to receive HIM, her pique not interfering, and it being rather stylish to be disengaged on the morning of the day when the household was in all the confusion of a premeditated rout.

{premeditated rout = planned party}

"This is SO good of you, Miss Monson," said Tom, as he made his bow--I heard it all, being still on the sofa--"This is SO good of you, when your time must have so many demands on it.""Not in the least, Mr. Thurston--mamma and the housekeeper have settled every thing, and I am really pleased to see you, as you can give me the history of the new play--""Ah! Miss Monson, my heart--my faculties--my ideas--" Tom was getting bothered, and he made a desperate effort to extricate himself--"In short, my JUDGMENT is so confused and monopolized, that I have no powers left to think or speak of plays. In a word, I was not there.""That explains it, then--and what has thus confused your mind, Mr.

Thurston?"

"The approach of this awful night. You will be surrounded by a host of admirers, pouring into your ears their admiration and love, and then what shall I have to support me, but that 'yes,' with which you once raised me from the depths of despair to an elevation of happiness that was high as the highest pinnacle of the caverns of Kentucky; raising me from the depths of Chimborazo."{caverns of Kentucky = Mammoth Cave; Chimborazo = a 20,500 foot volcano in Ecuador}

Tom meant to reverse this image, but love is proverbially desperate in its figures of speech, and any thing was better than appearing to hesitate. Nevertheless, Miss Monson was too well instructed, and had too much real taste, not to feel surprise at all this extravagance of diction and poetry.

"I am not certain, Mr. Thurston, that I rightly understand you," she said.

"Chimborazo is not particularly low, nor are the caverns of Kentucky so strikingly elevated.""Ascribe it all to that fatal, heart-thrilling, hope-inspiring 'yes,' loveliest of human females," continued Tom, kneeling with some caution, lest the straps of his pantaloons should give way--"Impute all to your own lucid ambiguity, and to the torments of hope that I experience. Repeat that 'yes,' lovely, consolatory, imaginative being, and raise me from the thrill of depression, to the liveliest pulsations of all human acmes.""Hang it," thought Tom, "if she stand THAT, I shall presently be ashore.

Genius, itself, can invent nothing finer."But Julia did stand it. She admired Tom for his exterior, but the admiration of no moderately sensible woman could overlook rodomontade so exceedingly desperate. It was trespassing too boldly on the proprieties to utter such nonsense to a gentlewoman, and Tom, who had got his practice in a very low school, was doomed to discover that he had overreached himself.

"I am not certain I quite understand you, Mr. Thurston, answered the half-irritated, half-amused young lady; "your language is so very extraordinary--your images so unusual--""Say, rather, that it is your own image, loveliest incorporation of perceptible incarnations," interrupted Tom, determined to go for the whole, and recalling some rare specimens of magazine eloquence--"Talk not of images, obdurate maid, when you are nothing but an image yourself.""I! Mr. Thurston--and of what is it your pleasure to accuse me of being the image?""O! unutterable wo--yes, inexorable girl, your vacillating 'yes' has rendered me the impersonation of that oppressive sentiment, of which your beauty and excellence have become the mocking reality. Alas, alas! that bearded men,"--Tom's face was covered with hair--"Alas, alas! that bearded men should be brought to weep over the contrarieties of womanly caprice."Here Tom bowed his head, and after a grunting sob or two, he raised his handkerchief in a very pathetic manner to his face, and THOUGHTto himself--"Well, if she stand THAT, the Lord only knows what I shall say next."As for Julia, she was amused, though at first she had been a little frightened. The girl had a good deal of spirit, and she had tant soit peu of mother Eve's love of mischief in her. She determined to "make capital" out of the affair, as the Americans say, in shop-keeping slang.

{tant soit peu = an ever so tiny amount}