The Water Ghost and Others

Willis had met Miss Hollister but once, and that, for a certain purpose, was sufficient.  He was smitten.  She represented in every way his ideal, although until he had met her his ideal had been something radically different.  She was not at all Junoesque, and the maiden of his dreams had been decidedly so.  She had auburn hair, which hitherto Willis had detested.  Indeed, if the same hirsute wealth had adorned some other woman’s head, Willis would have called it red.  This shows how completely he was smitten.  She changed his point of view entirely.  She shattered his old ideal and set herself up in its stead, and she did most of it with a smile.

There was something, however, about Miss Hollister’s eyes that contributed to the smiting of Willis’s heart.  They were great round lustrous orbs, and deep.  So deep were they and so penetrating that Willis’s affections were away beyond their own depth the moment Miss Hollister’s eyes looked into his, and at the same time he had a dim and slightly uncomfortable notion that she could read every thought his mind held within its folds—­or rather, that she could see how utterly devoid of thought that mind was upon this ecstatic occasion, for Willis’s brain was set all agog by the sensations of the moment.

“By Jove!” he said to himself afterwards—­for Willis, wise man that he could be on occasions, was his own confidant, to the exclusion of all others—­“by Jove!  I believe she can peer into my very soul; and if she can, my hopes are blasted, for she must be able to see that a soul like mine is no more worthy to become the affinity of one like hers than a mountain rill can hope to rival the Amazon.”

Nevertheless, Willis did hope.

“Something may turn up, and perhaps—­perhaps I can devise some scheme by means of which my imperfections can be hidden from her.  Maybe I can put stained glass over the windows of my soul, and keep her from looking through them at my shortcomings.  Smoked glasses, perhaps—­and why not?  If smoked glasses can be used by mortals gazing at the sun, why may they not be used by me when gazing into those scarcely less glorious orbs of hers?”

Alas for Willis!  The fates were against him.  A far-off tribe of fates were in league to blast his chances of success forever, and this was how it happened: 

Willis had occasion one afternoon to come up town early.  At the corner of Broadway and Astor Place he entered a Madison Avenue car, paid his fare, and sat down in one of the corner seats at the rear end of the car.  His mind was, as usual, intent upon the glorious Miss Hollister.  Surely no one who had once met her could do otherwise than think of her constantly, he reflected; and the reflection made him a bit jealous.  What business had others to think of her?  Impertinent, grovelling mortals!  No man was good enough to do that—­no, not even himself.  But he could change.  He could at least try to be worthy of thinking about her, and he knew of no other man who could.  He’d like to catch any one else doing so little as mentioning her name!

“Impertinent, grovelling mortals!” he repeated.

And then the car stopped at Seventeenth Street, and who should step on board but Miss Hollister herself!

“The idea!” thought Willis.  “By Jove! there she is—­on a horse-car, too!  How atrocious!  One might as well expect to see Minerva driving in a grocer’s wagon as Miss Hollister in a horse-car.  Miserable, untactful world to compel Minerva to ride in a horse-cart, or rather Miss Hollister to ride in a grocer’s car!  Absurdest of absurdities!”

Here he raised his hat, for Miss Hollister had bowed sweetly to him as she passed on to the far end of the car, where she stood hanging on to a strap.

“I wonder why she doesn’t sit down?” thought Willis; for as he looked about the car he observed that with the exception of the one he occupied all the seats were vacant.  In fact, the only persons on board were Miss Hollister, the driver, the conductor, and himself.

“I think I’ll go speak to her,” he thought.  And then he thought again:  “No, I’d better not.  She saw me when she entered, and if she had wished to speak to me she would have sat down here beside me, or opposite me perhaps.  I shall show myself worthy of her by not thrusting my presence upon her.  But I wonder why she stands?  She looks tired enough.”

Here Miss Hollister indulged in a very singular performance.  She bowed her head slightly at some one, apparently on the sidewalk, Willis thought, murmured something, the purport of which Willis could not catch, and sat down in the middle of the seat on the other side of the car, looking very much annoyed—­in fact, almost unamiable.

Willis was more mystified than ever; but his mystification was as nothing compared to his anxiety when, on reaching Forty-second Street, Miss Hollister rose, and sweeping by him without a sign of recognition, left the car.

“Cut, by thunder!” ejaculated Willis, in consternation.  “And why, I wonder?  Most incomprehensible affair.  Can she be a woman of whims—­with eyes like those?  Never.  Impossible.  And yet what else can be the matter?”

Try as he might, Willis could not solve the problem.  It was utterly past solution as far as he was concerned.

“I’ll find out, and I’ll find out like a brave man,” he said, after racking his brains for an hour or two in a vain endeavor to get at the cause of Miss Hollister’s cut.  “I’ll call upon her to-night and ask her.”

He was true to his first purpose, but not to his second.  He called, but he did not ask her, for Miss Hollister did not give him the chance to do so.  Upon receiving his card she sent down word that she was out.  Two days later, meeting him face to face upon the street, she gazed coldly at him, and cut him once more.  Six months later her engagement to a Boston man was announced, and in the autumn following Miss Hollister of New York became Mrs. Barrows of Boston.  There were cards, but Willis did not receive one of them.  The cut was indeed complete and final.  But why?  That had now become one of the great problems of Willis’s life.  What had he done to be so badly treated?