Mr. Macglowrie's Widow

"Mr. Macglowrie's Widow" is a short story by Bret Harte that explores themes of love, loss, and the complexities of human relationships set against the backdrop of the American West. The narrative revolves around the widow of Mr. Macglowrie, who grapples with her grief while navigating the expectations and judgments of her community. Harte’s nuanced characterizations and poignant storytelling highlight the struggles of a woman seeking independence and fulfillment in a changing world. With a touch of humor and a keen observation of social dynamics, the story poignantly examines the impact of loss and the search for identity in the face of adversity.

• Short story

								
Very little was known of her late husband, yet that little was of a
sufficiently awe-inspiring character to satisfy the curiosity of
Laurel Spring. A man of unswerving animosity and candid belligerency,
untempered by any human weakness, he had been actively engaged as
survivor in two or three blood feuds in Kentucky, and some desultory
dueling, only to succumb, through the irony of fate, to an attack of
fever and ague in San Francisco. Gifted with a fine sense of humor, he
is said, in his last moments, to have called the simple-minded clergyman
to his bedside to assist him in putting on his boots. The kindly divine,
although pointing out to him that he was too weak to rise, much
less walk, could not resist the request of a dying man. When it was
fulfilled, Mr. MacGlowrie crawled back into bed with the remark that his
race had always "died with their boots on," and so passed smilingly and
tranquilly away.

It is probable that this story was invented to soften the ignominy of
MacGlowrie's peaceful end. The widow herself was also reported to be
endowed with relations of equally homicidal eccentricities. Her two
brothers, Stephen and Hector Boompointer, had Western reputations that
were quite as lurid and remote. Her own experiences of a frontier life
had been rude and startling, and her scalp--a singularly beautiful one
of blond hair--had been in peril from Indians on several occasions. A
pair of scissors, with which she had once pinned the intruding hand of
a marauder to her cabin doorpost, was to be seen in her sitting room at
Laurel Spring. A fair-faced woman with eyes the color of pale sherry,
a complexion sallowed by innutritious food, slight and tall figure, she
gave little suggestion of this Amazonian feat. But that it exercised a
wholesome restraint over the many who would like to have induced her
to reenter the married state, there is little reason to doubt. Laurel
Spring was a peaceful agricultural settlement. Few of its citizens
dared to aspire to the dangerous eminence of succeeding the defunct
MacGlowrie; few could hope that the sister of living Boompointers
would accept an obvious mesalliance with them. However sincere their
affection, life was still sweet to the rude inhabitants of Laurel
Spring, and the preservation of the usual quantity of limbs necessary to
them in their avocations. With their devotion thus chastened by caution,
it would seem as if the charming mistress of Laurel Spring House was
secure from disturbing attentions.

It was a pleasant summer afternoon, and the sun was beginning to strike
under the laurels around the hotel into the little office where the
widow sat with the housekeeper--a stout spinster of a coarser Western
type. Mrs. MacGlowrie was looking wearily over some accounts on the
desk before her, and absently putting back some tumbled sheaves from the
stack of her heavy hair. For the widow had a certain indolent Southern
negligence, which in a less pretty woman would have been untidiness,
and a characteristic hook and eyeless freedom of attire which on less
graceful limbs would have been slovenly. One sleeve cuff was unbuttoned,
but it showed the blue veins of her delicate wrist; the neck of her
dress had lost a hook, but the glimpse of a bit of edging round the
white throat made amends. Of all which, however, it should be said that
the widow, in her limp abstraction, was really unconscious.

"I reckon we kin put the new preacher in Kernel Starbottle's room," said
Miss Morvin, the housekeeper. "The kernel's going to-night."

"Oh," said the widow in a tone of relief, but whether at the early
departure of the gallant colonel or at the successful solution of the
problem of lodging the preacher, Miss Morvin could not determine. But
she went on tentatively:--

"The kernel was talkin' in the bar room, and kind o' wonderin' why you
hadn't got married agin. Said you'd make a stir in Sacramento--but you
was jest berried HERE."

"I suppose he's heard of my husband?" said the widow indifferently.

"Yes--but he said he couldn't PLACE YOU," returned Miss Morvin.

The widow looked up. "Couldn't place ME?" she repeated.

"Yes--hadn't heard o' MacGlowrie's wife and disremembered your
brothers."

"The colonel doesn't know everybody, even if he is a fighting man," said
Mrs. MacGlowrie with languid scorn.

"That's just what Dick Blair said," returned Miss Morvin. "And though
he's only a doctor, he jest stuck up agin' the kernel, and told that
story about your jabbin' that man with your scissors--beautiful; and
how you once fought off a bear with a red-hot iron, so that you'd have
admired to hear him. He's awfully gone on you!"

The widow took that opportunity to button her cuff.

"And how long does the preacher calculate to stay?" she added, returning
to business details.

"Only a day. They'll have his house fixed up and ready for him
to-morrow. They're spendin' a heap o' money on it. He ought to be the
pow'ful preacher they say he is--to be worth it."

But here Mrs. MacGlowrie's interest in the conversation ceased, and it
dropped.

In her anxiety to further the suit of Dick Blair, Miss Morvin had
scarcely reported the colonel with fairness.

That gentleman, leaning against the bar in the hotel saloon with a
cocktail in his hand, had expatiated with his usual gallantry upon
Mrs. MacGlowrie's charms, and on his own "personal" responsibility
had expressed the opinion that they were thrown away on Laurel Spring.
That--blank it all--she reminded him of the blankest beautiful woman
he had seen even in Washington--old Major Beveridge's daughter from
Kentucky. Were they sure she wasn't from Kentucky? Wasn't her name
Beveridge--and not Boompointer? Becoming more reminiscent over his
second drink, the colonel could vaguely recall only one Boompointer--a
blank skulking hound, sir--a mean white shyster--but, of course, he
couldn't have been of the same breed as such a blank fine woman as the
widow! It was here that Dick Blair interrupted with a heightened color
and a glowing eulogy of the widow's relations and herself, which,
however, only increased the chivalry of the colonel--who would be the
last man, sir, to detract from--or suffer any detraction of--a lady's
reputation. It was needless to say that all this was intensely diverting
to the bystanders, and proportionally discomposing to Blair, who already
experienced some slight jealousy of the colonel as a man whose fighting
reputation might possibly attract the affections of the widow of the
belligerent MacGlowrie. He had cursed his folly and relapsed into gloomy
silence until the colonel left.

For Dick Blair loved the widow with the unselfishness of a generous
nature and a first passion. He had admired her from the first day
his lot was cast in Laurel Spring, where coming from a rude frontier
practice he had succeeded the district doctor in a more peaceful and
domestic ministration. A skillful and gentle surgeon rather than a

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