A Rose of Glenbogie

"A Rose of Glenbogie" is a short story by Bret Harte that explores themes of love, identity, and cultural clash in the backdrop of the American West. The narrative follows the romantic entanglement between a Scottish immigrant and a native Californian, illustrating the complexities of their relationship amid societal expectations and personal aspirations. Harte's signature style, marked by vivid characterizations and a keen sense of place, brings to life the struggles of individuals seeking connection in a rapidly changing world. Through humor and poignancy, the story reflects on the deeper meanings of home and belonging.

• Short story

								
The American consul at St. Kentigern stepped gloomily from the train at
Whistlecrankie station. For the last twenty minutes his spirits had been
slowly sinking before the drifting procession past the carriage windows
of dull gray and brown hills--mammiform in shape, but so cold and
sterile in expression that the swathes of yellow mist which lay in
their hollows, like soiled guipure, seemed a gratuitous affectation of
modesty. And when the train moved away, mingling its escaping steam
with the slower mists of the mountain, he found himself alone on the
platform--the only passenger and apparently the sole occupant of the
station. He was gazing disconsolately at his trunk, which had taken upon
itself a human loneliness in the emptiness of the place, when a railway
porter stepped out of the solitary signal-box, where he had evidently
been performing a double function, and lounged with exasperating
deliberation towards him. He was a hard-featured man, with a thin fringe
of yellow-gray whiskers that met under his chin like dirty strings to
tie his cap on with.

"Ye'll be goin' to Glenbogie House, I'm thinkin'?" he said moodily.

The consul said that he was.

"I kenned it. Ye'll no be gettin' any machine to tak' ye there. They'll
be sending a carriage for ye--if ye're EXPECTED." He glanced half
doubtfully at the consul as if he was not quite so sure of it.

But the consul believed he WAS expected, and felt relieved at the
certain prospect of a conveyance. The porter meanwhile surveyed him
moodily.

"Ye'll be seein' Mistress MacSpadden there!"

The consul was surprised into a little over-consciousness. Mrs.
MacSpadden was a vivacious acquaintance at St. Kentigern, whom he
certainly--and not without some satisfaction--expected to meet at
Glenbogie House. He raised his eyes inquiringly to the porter's.

"Ye'll no be rememberin' me. I had a machine in St. Kentigern and drove
ye to MacSpadden's ferry often. Far, far too often! She's a strange
flagrantitious creature; her husband's but a puir fule, I'm thinkin',
and ye did yersel' nae guid gaunin' there."

It was a besetting weakness of the consul's that his sense of the
ludicrous was too often reached before his more serious perceptions. The
absurd combination of the bleak, inhospitable desolation before him, and
the sepulchral complacency of his self-elected monitor, quite upset his
gravity.

"Ay, ye'll be laughin' THE NOO," returned the porter with gloomy
significance.

The consul wiped his eyes. "Still," he said demurely, "I trust you won't
object to my giving you sixpence to carry my box to the carriage when
it comes, and let the morality of this transaction devolve entirely
upon me. Unless," he continued, even more gravely, as a spick and span
brougham, drawn by two thoroughbreds, dashed out of the mist up to
the platform, "unless you prefer to state the case to those two
gentlemen"--pointing to the smart coachman and footman on the box--"and
take THEIR opinion as to the propriety of my proceeding any further.
It seems to me that their consciences ought to be consulted as well
as yours. I'm only a stranger here, and am willing to do anything to
conform to the local custom."

"It's a saxpence ye'll be payin' anyway," said the porter, grimly
shouldering the trunk, "but I'll be no takin' any other mon's opinion on
matters of my am dooty and conscience."

"Ah," said the consul gravely, "then you'll perhaps be allowing ME the
same privilege."

The porter's face relaxed, and a gleam of approval--purely intellectual,
however,--came into his eyes.

"Ye were always a smooth deevel wi' your tongue, Mr. Consul," he said,
shouldering the box and walking off to the carriage.

Nevertheless, as soon as he was fairly seated and rattling away from the
station, the consul had a flashing conviction that he had not only
been grievously insulted but also that he had allowed the wife of an
acquaintance to be spoken of disrespectfully in his presence. And he had
done nothing! Yes--it was like him!--he had LAUGHED at the absurdity of
the impertinence without resenting it! Another man would have slapped
the porter's face! For an instant he hung out of the carriage window,
intent upon ordering the coachman to drive back to the station, but the
reflection--again a ludicrous one--that he would now be only bringing
witnesses to a scene which might provoke a scandal more invidious to his
acquaintance, checked him in time. But his spirits, momentarily diverted
by the porter's effrontery, sunk to a lower ebb than before.

The clattering of his horses' hoofs echoed back from the rocky walls
that occasionally hemmed in the road was not enlivening, but was less
depressing than the recurring monotony of the open. The scenery did not
suggest wildness to his alien eyes so much as it affected him with a
vague sense of scorbutic impoverishment. It was not the loneliness of
unfrequented nature, for there was a well-kept carriage road traversing
its dreariness; and even when the hillside was clothed with scanty
verdure, there were "outcrops" of smooth glistening weather-worn rocks
showing like bare brown knees under the all too imperfectly kilted
slopes. And at a little distance, lifting above a black drift of firs,
were the square rigid sky lines of Glenbogie House, standing starkly
against the cold, lingering northern twilight. As the vehicle turned,
and rolled between two square stone gate-posts, the long avenue before
him, though as well kept as the road, was but a slight improvement upon
the outer sterility, and the dark iron-gray rectangular mansion beyond,
guiltless of external decoration, even to the outlines of its small
lustreless windows, opposed the grim inhospitable prospect with an
equally grim inhospitable front. There were a few moments more of rapid
driving, a swift swishing over soft gravel, the opening of a heavy
door into a narrow vestibule, and then--a sudden sense of exquisitely
diffused light and warmth from an arched and galleried central hall, the
sounds of light laughter and subdued voices half lost in the airy space
between the lofty pictured walls; the luxury of color in trophies,
armor, and hangings; one or two careless groups before the recessed
hearth or at the centre table, and the halted figure of a pretty woman
on the broad, slow staircase. The contrast was sharp, ironical, and
bewildering.

So much so that the consul, when he had followed the servant to his
room, was impelled to draw aside the heavy window-curtains and look out
again upon the bleak prospect it had half obliterated. The wing in which
he was placed overhung a dark ravine or gully choked with shrubs and
brambles that grew in a new luxuriance. As he gazed a large black bird
floated upwards slowly from its depths, circled around the house with a
few quick strokes of its wing, and then sped away--a black bolt--in one
straight undeviating line towards the paling north. He still gazed into

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