Mr Gowan

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They had determined not to admire Lord Decimus’s picture. They had determined to believe that in every service, except their own, a man must qualify himself, by striving early and late, and by working heart and soul, might and main. So now Mr Gowan, like that worn-out old coffin which never was Mahomet’s nor anybody else’s, hung midway between two points: jaundiced and jealous as to the one he had left: jaundiced and jealous as to the other that he couldn’t reach. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ His large pink face was upturned as he climbed, and it was subdued already to the sort of solemnity that men put on at a funeral. As he came over the rail and lowered himself to the deck there was that in his movements which suggested a man moving on tiptoe.
"He'd know, of course," reflected Mr. Gowan, walking across to the head of the bridge ladder to receive him.
In the chartroom, through whose open door they could see the boat working down to the cutter again, the pilot spoke across the rim of his tumbler.
"And so the old captain's gone," he said. "Well, it's what happens to all of us. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ The butcher, whose ruddy face looked dim in his disappointment, and whose despondent chin hung down on his white shirt bosom, picked up one of the designs gingerly and examined it.
“Are they all alike, doctor?” he asked.
Judge Bowles looked over Mr. Gowan’s shoulder.
“Each design seems to be a hollow shaft of some kind, with a round opening at the top,” he said, and looked inquiringly over his glasses at the doctor, who nodded assent.
“They are all hollow. You seem to get more for your money so. The round opening at the top of the shaft can be filled with anything we choose later. ”

“ Horse and rider were still in the curve of their swift flight when Isobel Knowles came out into the porch, yawning behind her plump, sunbrowned hand. A glance at Gowan cut the yawn short. She looked alertly afield and at once caught sight of the runaway.
“Kid!––O-oh!” she cried. “Mr. Ashton!––on Rocket!”
Gowan spun about to her with a guilty start, but answered almost glibly: “You said he could ride, Miss Chuckie.”
“He’ll––he’ll be killed!––Daddy!”
Knowles stepped out through the doorway, cocking his big blue-barreled Colt’s. Gowan hastily pointed towards the runaway. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Judge Gowan is the only son of the late Henry Hatton Gowan, of Wexford, Ireland, where the subject of this sketch was born on the 22nd of December, 1817. His family emigrated to this country when he was in his fifteenth year, and settled on a farm in the township of Albion, in what is now the county of Peel. The late Mr. Gowan was afterwards appointed Deputy Clerk of the Crown for the county of Simcoe, which position, we believe, he retained until his death in 1863. ”

“ She grows prettier every day of her life, and she is beginning to know that she does, too.”
Five minutes after this the small face was drawn away from the window-pane with a sigh of relief.
“There she is now. What a time she has been! Who is with her, I wonder? I cannot see whether it is Phil or Mr. Gowan, it is getting so dark. It must be Mr. Gowan. 'Toinette would be with them if it was Phil.”
“Why, Mollie,” she exclaimed, when the door opened, “I saw somebody with you, and I thought it was Mr. Gowan. Why did n't he come in? Don't waken Tod.” ”

“ So he had heard, Arthur said.
‘From your partner?’ returned Henry Gowan. ‘What a dear old fellow he is!’
‘I have a great regard for him.’
‘By Jove, he is the finest creature!’ said Gowan. ‘So fresh, so green, trusts in such wonderful things!’
Here was one of the many little rough points that had a tendency to grate on Clennam’s hearing. He put it aside by merely repeating that he had a high regard for Mr Doyce.
‘He is charming! To see him mooning along to that time of life, laying down nothing by the way and picking up nothing by the way, is delightful. It warms a man. ”

“ Mr Meagles asked, What kind of thing?
‘It is in vain,’ said Mrs Gowan, ‘for people to attempt to get on together who have such extremely different antecedents; who are jumbled against each other in this accidental, matrimonial sort of way; and who cannot look at the untoward circumstance which has shaken them together in the same light. It never does.’
Mr Meagles was beginning, ‘Permit me to say, ma’am—’
‘No, don’t,’ returned Mrs Gowan. ‘Why should you! It is an ascertained fact. It never does. ”

“ Gowan listened attentively, though without commenting either by look or word. When she had quite finished, he asked a single question: “Think your Daddy won’t mind, Miss Chuckie?”
“He will understand that we simply can’t leave here until Lafe and––Mr. Blake are safe up out of the cañon.”
“All right. You’re the boss,” he acquiesced. 274 “Just write out a list of what you want. I’ll take all the hawsses down to the waterhole, and go on to the ranch. You can look for me back at sunup. The moon rises between three and four.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ The third evening, after supper, Gowan handed Isobel the horny, half-flattened rattles of an unusually large rattlesnake.
“What is it? Do you wish me to guess his length?” she asked, evidently surprised that he should fetch her so commonplace an object. “I make it four feet.”
“You’re three inches short,” he replied.
“Well, what about it?” she inquired.
“Nothing––only I just happened to get him up near the bunkhouse, Miss Chuckie. Thought I’d tell you, in case he has a mate around.”
“We must all look sharp. You, too, Mr. Ashton. They are more apt to strike without warning, this time of year.” ”

“ To this Gowan had no objection. No, he knew he was too safe.
There was a passing cloud on Mr Meagles’s good-humoured face when they all three (four, counting the dog, and he was the most objectionable but one of the party) came in to breakfast. Neither it, nor the touch of uneasiness on Mrs Meagles as she directed her eyes towards it, was unobserved by Clennam.
‘Well, Gowan,’ said Mr Meagles, even suppressing a sigh; ‘how goes the world with you this morning?’
‘Much as usual, sir. ”

“ Gowan stared at him between narrowed lids, and replied to the girl somewhat shortly: “I didn’t get him this time, Miss Chuckie.”
“You didn’t? That’s too bad! You don’t often miss. I wish you had been with me, to run down the scoundrel who tried to murder Mr. Ashton.”
Gowan burst into the harsh, strained laughter of one who seldom gives way to mirth. He checked himself abruptly and cast a hostile look at Ashton. “By––James, Miss Chuckie, you don’t mean to say you let a tenderfoot string you?”
“How about this?” asked the girl. She held out the silver flask, which she had not returned to Ashton. ”

“ They set off running, and the next minute were at the gate opening on to the Park, where another sentry challenged them.
“I’m Mr Frank Gowan, Captain Sir Robert Gowan’s son, and this is Mr Andrew Forbes, Prince’s page.”
“Yes, I know you, young gentlemen; but where’s the password?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Andrew impatiently. “Don’t stop us, or they’ll get it over before we’re there. Look here; come to our rooms any time to-day, and ask for us. We’ll give you a guinea to let us go.” ”

“ Knowles,” put in Gowan. “If you want the tenderfeet on your range, all right. If you don’t, I’ll engage to head back any bunch of engineers agoing, and I don’t care whether they’re dogies or longhorns.”
“There is to be no surveying party,” explained Isobel. “Mr. Blake is coming to visit us with his wife and baby. Here is his letter.”
“Hey?” ejaculated Knowles. He read the letter with frowning deliberation, and passed it on to Gowan. “Well, he seems to be square enough. Guess we’ll 124 have to send over for him, honey, long as you asked him to come.”
“Oh, you will, Daddy!” she cried. ”