Gowan

“ Gowan, driving, lighted a cigar; Clennam declined one. Do what he would, he fell into such a mood of abstraction that Gowan said again, ‘I am very much afraid my mother has bored you?’ To which he roused himself to answer, ‘Not at all!’ and soon relapsed again.
In that state of mind which rendered nobody uneasy, his thoughtfulness would have turned principally on the man at his side. ”

“ It showed that the gentleman, highly connected, and not a mere workman, would be under an obligation to him. He expressed his satisfaction in placing himself in Mr Gowan’s hands, and trusted that he would have the pleasure, in their characters of private gentlemen, of improving his acquaintance.
‘You are very good,’ said Gowan. ‘I have not forsworn society since I joined the brotherhood of the brush (the most delightful fellows on the face of the earth) , and am glad enough to smell the old fine gunpowder now and then, though it did blow me into mid-air and my present calling. ”

“ Gowan made a trumpet of his hands. The salt-sea roar woke the echoes along the dock. "Man overboard!" it sounded, reverberating along the quays. "Boat wanted! Man overboard!"
Behind him Proctor made sounds like whimpering. "They won't be in time," he was crying. "They won't be in time."
Gowan jerked him away with a sweep of his arm. "Out of the road!" he cried, and his coat, as he flung it off, took the younger man in the face. He had not time for his inarticulate protest before Gowan went overboard, head first, from the wing of the bridge. ”

“ The heavy, leaden feeling of despair and disappointment increased as Frank Gowan ran across the courtyard, feeling that it was useless to expect to find Captain Murray, but making for his quarters in the faint hope that he might have been detained, and cudgelling his brains as he ran, to try and find a means of learning the route that the escort would take, so that he might even then try and intercept the prisoners’ carriages. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Louis F. Gowan for his 'pile of experience' about Chinese coolies. This is what we want—familiarity with the subject, not more dogmatism. And the question is whether Chinamen in Africa would be the 'pig-tailed cut-throats' described by Mr. Gowan. I did not find them so in Bombay, San Francisco, and Peru.
"On the other hand, I am in nowise edified by the dogmatism displayed at the annual meeting of the Guinea Gold Coast Mining Company. A chairman is hardly expected to be an expert, but he must not address his shareholders as if he were a high authority. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He remembered the pool where his father had told him they both used to fish as boys, and about Harry Gowan the fisherman who used to go out in his boat, and who was with them when that storm suddenly broke when the boat was wrecked on the island and they were all nearly drowned. He was very glad to hear that Gowan was still alive; and that James Wilson, who was then under stableman and used to look after their ponies, was now coachman; and that Sam, the gardener's boy who used to show them where the birds' nests were, was now head-gardener ”

“ You called him ‘Kid.’”
“Kid Gowan,” she confirmed. “Yes, he holds to the old traditions even in that. There are six notches on the hilt of his ‘gun,’ if you count the two little ones he nicked for his brace of Utes.”
“What! He is a real Indian fighter, like Kit Carson?” 23
“Oh, no, it was merely a band of hide hunters that came over the line from Utah, and Mr. Gowan helped the game warden run them back to their reservation.” ”

“ Proctor!" cried Gowan. "No, the captain's ashore. Come in, sir; I've got some coffee coming."
"Right," said Proctor. "Jove! This coaldust is beastly. How's the loading getting along?"
He was a man of thirty, tall, serious and carelessly agreeable. The captains and officers in the firm's employ liked him for his mere humanity. "You can say what you mean to Proctor, and he'll tell you to go to blazes yourself," they said of him.
"Coal doesn't come very quick," Gowan told him. "There's forty trucks due now. Did you want to see the captain himself or is it something I can handle for you?" ”

“ Ah, Tod,” in a fresh burst, “when you grow up, the daisies may have been growing for many a year over poor little Aunt Dolly, and you will have forgotten her quite.”
“You must not look at the matter in that desponding way,” said Gowan, quite unsteadily. “We must hope for the best, and do what we can. You may rely upon me to exert myself to the utmost. If we succeed in finding Donne I am sure that he will do the rest. Perhaps, next summer Vagabondia will be as bright as ever,—nay, even brighter than it has been before.” ”

“ London, 1717. — Mr. Gowan, minister of the English Church at Leyden, being here this summer, was desirous to kiss the King’s hand, his Majesty being then at Hampton Court. Being an utter stranger there, he desired my assistance. I accordingly went with him, and applied to Mr. Robethon, his Majesty’s private secretary for Hanover, who received us with great civility. He, entering into free conversation with Mr. Gowan, enquired particularly after the behaviour of the Scottish gentlemen who retired into Holland after the late Rebellion in the North was over ”

“ 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 ”

“ This devoted servant of God encouraged and stood by me in all my future plans for the extension of our mission. No other man in the East or in America has given half as much money to develop our work in India as Colonel Gowan has contributed. ”

“ The ladies were determined to keep above the explorers at all points where the rim of the cañon could be approached. Gowan was to fetch and carry for them and take the horses down to the pool for water at night. ”

“ Gowan, “their uncle has taken ‘Tenby’”—she waved her hand to the cottage opposite that had stood irksomely monotonous with closed shutters and chained gate ever since the Lomaxes had come to Burunda this year, “and of course they will often want to come down to him to listen to his stories. He is Hugh Kinross, you know.”
They did not know, and even now the name was a name to them and nothing more. Mrs. Gowan evidently took it for granted that even children must have heard of her brother, the famous author.
“So you will help me, won’t you, Pauline?” ”

“ This Gowan can’t be much older than I am.”
The girl dropped her bantering tone, and answered soberly: “He is only twenty-five, and yet he is a full generation older than you. He was born and raised in a cow camp. He is one of the few men of the type that remain to link the range of today with the vanished world of the cattle frontier.”
“Yet you say that the fellow is only my age?”
“In years, yes. But in type he belongs to the generation that is past––the generation of longhorns, long drives, long Colt’s, and short lives; of stampedes, and hats like yours, badmen, and Injins.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As, however, Gowan continued growling about “beastly shame” and “poor devil of a greenhorn,” etc, Key answered dryly.
“Waal, I did think of it; but, first place, they ain’t my waggons—”
Gowan grunted out, “Dam rot!”
“And second place,” continued Key placidly, “considerin’ the kind o’ cargo you’ve got aboard, and where it’s going to, I didn’t reckon you wanted any passengers!”
“I don’t want passengers,” said Gowan gloomily; “but any damned fool knows that that fellow’ll never see food or blankets or ‘boy’ again on the face of God’s earth. Kaffir carriers don’t forget things at outspans. ”

“ They talked of him. "I've got a real mate at last," one of them used to say. "I only go to sea for the look of the thing; the mate's the boss." But Captain Sleeman was slow to such perceptions. Instead of staying ashore while the Chandos lay in dock, taking the dignified ease proper to a master and commander, he moved into his cabin and lived on board. There could be no doubt about his capability; Gowan was too good a seaman to fail to do him credit. The captain thrust Gowan to one side, made him of no account, interfered with his arrangements, ordered him about in his harsh, querulous way ”