Esther Gowan

“ But there is nothing singular in that; who could help loving so beautiful and winning a creature! I could not wonder at any one loving her. No indeed.
It will not make you uneasy on Mrs Gowan’s account, I hope—for I remember that you said you had the interest of a true friend in her—if I tell you that I wish she could have married some one better suited to her. Mr Gowan seems fond of her, and of course she is very fond of him, but I thought he was not earnest enough—I don’t mean in that respect—I mean in anything. ”

“ Life of the sort we led, no doubt, develops the sterling good qualities of one’s nature, but quick sympathy and its kindred delicate traits are rather growths of refinement and quiet, and it betrayed no real want of feeling that we had not taken Gowan’s view.
There could be no doubt, of course, that the Kaffir boy had bolted with the blankets and food, for we had noticed that the young German had nothing left when we saw him but that yellow portmanteau, and our knowledge of the Delagoa Bay “boy” forbade acceptance of the theory that he had gone empty-handed. ”

“ Owing (as I think, if you think so too) to Mr Gowan’s unsettled and dissatisfied way, he applies himself to his profession very little. He does nothing steadily or patiently; but equally takes things up and throws them down, and does them, or leaves them undone, without caring about them. When I have heard him talking to Papa during the sittings for the picture, I have sat wondering whether it could be that he has no belief in anybody else, because he has no belief in himself. ”

“ I don't know whether it always comes true, though."
"I'm a believer in superstitions," declared Gowan. "Scotch people generally are, I think. My great-grandmother used to have second sight. By the by; it's Hallowe'en on Friday! I vote we rummage up all the old charms we can, and try them. It would be ever such fun."
"Topping! Only let us keep it to the Mafia, and not let the others know."
"Rather! We don't want Laurette and Co. butting in." ”

“ Ogle R. Gowan, staunch Irish-Orange Tory as he was, was a herald of Responsible Government—and suffered for it—a prophet as to ’37, chief promoter in the first movement which resulted in Canadian volunteers, father and founder of Orangeism here, and although a strong supporter of Colborne was antagonistic to the methods of Francis Bond Head; in his military career he was chiefly conspicuous at Prescott, and carried the buckshot and bayonet record of that engagement to his grave. To such a man Mrs. Gowan, a womanly woman of great culture and heroic spirit, was a true helpmeet. ”

“ Mr Gowan goes out a good deal among what is considered the best company here—though he does not look as if he enjoyed it or liked it when he is with it—and she sometimes accompanies him, but lately she has gone out very little. I think I have noticed that they have an inconsistent way of speaking about her, as if she had made some great self-interested success in marrying Mr Gowan, though, at the same time, the very same people, would not have dreamed of taking him for themselves or their daughters. ”

“ It’s a long ways from being a sure thing.”
“All the way down to the bottom of Deep Cañon!” put in Ashton.
“And then some!” added Gowan. “I’ve hit on another ‘if,’ Miss Chuckie.”
“You have? Oh, Kid, tell us!”
“It’s this: How’s he going to get electricity to dig his tunnel?”
Blake was coming up from the pool, with his baby in one arm and his wife clinging fondly to the other. He met the coldly exultant glance of Gowan, and smiled.
“The only question regarding the power is one of cost, Mr. Gowan,” he said. “There is no coal near enough to be hauled. But gasolene is not bulky. ”

“ The habit, too, of seeking some sort of recompense in the discontented boast of being disappointed, is a habit fraught with degeneracy. A certain idle carelessness and recklessness of consistency soon comes of it. To bring deserving things down by setting undeserving things up is one of its perverted delights; and there is no playing fast and loose with the truth, in any game, without growing the worse for it.
In his expressed opinions of all performances in the Art of painting that were completely destitute of merit, Gowan was the most liberal fellow on earth. ”

“ Miss Hardy was kind that evening, and turned a blind eye to deficiencies of order. She was seen surreptitiously reading the program, and it was the general opinion in the dormitory that she and the other mistresses were much disappointed at having been excluded from the entertainment.
"It did seem rather mean not to ask them," said Gowan, self-reproachfully, "though they'd have spoilt the whole show. I vote we give another some time—a prunes and prism affair without any lovers in it—and let them all come."
"Right you are! But it will be a tame business after this!" agreed Bertha. ”

“ I would rather stay here and work myself to death than take your money."
This produced a terrific storm of abuse from Gowan. He called her "priest-ridden" and every kind of fool and idiot. She would soon learn to repent of her folly, for he would go straightway to a lawyer and change his will! Not a penny would she get—now or later—from him, as she would find one day to her cost! Then he dashed away without further discussion.
"The fellow is a brute!" was Val's conclusion. "They are well rid of him! ”

“ James!” swore Gowan, dropping his guitar 121 and springing up to confront Ashton with deadly menace in his cold eyes. “This is what comes of nursing scotched rattlers! This here tenderfoot skunk has been foreriding for that engineer! I warned you, Mr. Knowles! I told you he had sent for him to come out here and cut up our range with his damned irrigation schemes!”
“I send for Blake––I?” protested Ashton. He burst into a discordant laugh.
“Laugh, will you?” said Gowan, dropping his hand to his hip.
The girl flung herself before him. “Stop! stop, Kid! Are you locoed? ”

“ I’ll do it myself, some day, and turn the whole thing into a game preserve.”
“When you do,” warned Gowan, “you’d better hunt a healthier climate.”
“What we’re concerned with now,” interposed Knowles, “is this yearling.”
“The live or the dead one, Daddy?” asked the girl, her cheeks dimpling.
“What d’you––Aw––haw! haw! haw!––The 16 live or the dead one! Catch that, Kid? The live or the dead one! Haw! haw! haw!”
The cowman fairly roared with laughter. Neither of the young men joined in his hilarious outburst. Gowan waited, cold and unsmiling. Ashton stiffened with offended dignity. ”

“ Gowan might be said to be the [172] doctor’s only audience. The rest of the company were engaged in whispering to each other, or speechlessly giving themselves over to suppressed and unholy glee. Judge Bowles was openly wiping his eyes and shaking in his chair. Dr. Michel looked around the circle with resentful surprise.
“You seem amused, gentlemen!” he said, with dignity; and then addressing himself to Mr. Gowan exclusively, as if that gentleman alone were worthy to be his listener, “Would you object to a woman as keeper, Mr. Gowan?”
“What’s her name?” asked the butcher. ”

“ Resolved to sell his life as dearly as lay in his power, he sprang forward with a Colt's revolver, and discharged it twice. One Indian fell, and another set up a cry like the bellowing of a bull. But poor Gowan did not fire a third shot. A tall savage approached him from behind, and striking him upon the head with his rifle-stock felled him to the earth. Then the savages fired five or six shots into him as he lay upon the floor. The body was dragged away, and the blood-thirsty fiends sat waiting for the approach of another victim. ”

“ Not when you wear the white merino, and 'heavy swells' admire you openly?”
“No,” shaking her head in stout denial of the imputation. “Never. I think about you from morning until night; and the fact is,” in a charming burst of candor, “I actually wake in the night and think about you. There! are you satisfied now?”
It would have been impossible to remain altogether unconsoled and unmoved under such circumstances, but he could not help trying her again.
“Dolly,” he said, “does Gowan never make you forget me?” ”

“ He was not in the mood to be either just or generous, and he saw in Ralph Gowan nothing but a man who had both the power and will to rival him, and rob him of peace and hope forever. If Dolly had been with him, in all probability his wretchedness would have evaporated in a harmless outburst, which would have touched the girl's heart so tenderly that she would have withheld nothing of love and consolation which could reassure him, and so in the end the tempest would have left no wound behind. But as it was left to himself and his imaginings, every thought held its bitter sting. ”

“ Gowan was afoot. His horse, as well as the regular pack animals, was heavily loaded with stores. He walked with Isobel, who had insisted that Ashton should ride her pony. Blake strode along at his wife’s stirrup, carrying his son in a clasp as tender as it was strong.
The engineer was the only cheerful member of the party. Even Thomas Herbert, that best tempered of babies, was peevish and fretful. He was instinctively reflexing the suppressed nervousness and anxiety of his mother. Gowan and Ashton were as gloomy in look and speech as the shadowy depths of the cañon. ”

“ FROM the wing of the bridge, Mr. Gowan, chief officer of the Chandos, temporarily in command, watched the pilot's boat come crawling crablike across the slow surges. It was a day of haze; the horizon was lost in the gray of it, and ahead the line of the coast was a darker smear upon the distance.
"Put that ladder over!" said Mr. Gowan curtly, without moving.
He was a man of fifty, handsome and gray, with that touch of distinction that men gain whose business is the exercise of authority. ”

“ He decided that upon the whole Lady Augusta was somewhat to be pitied.
“Dolly says,” proceeded Mollie, “that she would like to be a beauty; but if I was like her I should n't care about being a beauty.”
“Ah!” said Gowan, unable to resist the temptation to try with a fine speech,—"ah! it is all very well for you to talk about not caring to be a beauty.”
It did not occur to him for an instant that it was indiscreet to say such a thing to her. He only meant it for a jest, and nine girls out of ten even at sixteen would have understood his languid air of grandiloquence in an instant. ”

“ I was thinking that minute of taking him in my two hands and heaving him into the dock. He's got a voice like an ashhoist; it simply jars a man to be talked to in his fashion."
Mrs. Gowan made some soft noise; the mate shook his head.
"If I left now who's to say when I'd get a ship?" he said. "But Captain Sleeman's the limit. Looks just like a landsman to me; I tell you he's the livin' image of a shipchandler's tout. He went over the papers in the chartroom. ”

“ You'll just have to leave me out."
"Pull yourself together, Dulcie, my child!" said Gowan calmly. "You'll either be turned [275] bodily out of the Mafia, or you'll do your bit the same as everybody else. Don't for a moment imagine you're coming to listen to other people's industry, and bring nothing of your own with you! That's not the way we manage things here. If you don't show up with a manuscript in your hand, you'll find yourself walking down the passage with the door slammed behind you. Yes, I mean it! You're a decent enough little person, but you're apt to be slack. ”

“ THIS was the significant and poetic appellation which at once attached itself to Ralph Gowan after his first visit to the studio in Bloomsbury Place, and, as might have been expected, it was a fancy of Dolly's, the affixing of significant titles being one of her fortes.
“The lilies of the field,” she observed, astutely, “are a distinct class. They toil not, neither do they spin, and yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Yes, my young friends, Mr. Ralph Gowan is a lily of the field.” ”

“ You don't see many like him nowadays."
Mr. Gowan agreed. He had served with the late captain of the Chandos for several years and knew him exhaustively. It had not been an easy service, for the old man had added to the infirmities of his age a petulance and ill humor that lived in the mate's memory like a bad taste in the mouth. Even as he answered the pilot he had in mind the spare figure with its thin raw neck, the voice of rasping complaint and the cold uncertain eyes of the dead captain. ”

“ Next place, a man like his father, that’s piled up a mint of money, isn’t going to send out his son as forerider in a hostile country. Lastly, I’ve read a lot more about that engineer Blake than you have, and I’ve sized him up as a man who won’t do anything that isn’t square and open.”
“Maybe he ain’t in on the dirty side of the deal,” admitted Gowan. “How about this letter, though?”
“Just a friendly writing, like as not,” answered the cowman. “No, Kid––only trouble with you is you’re too anxious over the interests of Dry Mesa range. I appreciate it, boy, and so does Chuckie. ”

“ Ralph Gowan had been presented to an extended circle of admiring friends as the sole heir to a fortune large enough to have satisfied the ambitions of half a dozen heirs of moderate aspirations, and from that time forward his lines had continually fallen in pleasant places. As a boy he had been handsome, attractive, and thoroughbred, and consequently popular; his good looks made him a favorite with women, his good fortune with men ”