Argosy, Vol. 1 (1882) — page 340: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ANNIS DENHAM’S SUBTERFUGE. 431 Inher girlhood she hadhaddreamis of great things ; these she laughed at now. She would try only to be true, true to herself and to her own ideals. Success .came in small measure, bringing contentment and congenial occupation. It did not last. The cares of home, which must be always first, caused the pen to be laid aside; but she smiled even as she sighed over the un- fulftiled desires. , So the years passed, and there was more of duty—duty to others. She calmly accepted whatever came, but al- ways with the hope that her time would yet come. It came at last, but too late! The loved work was taken up again, but the narrow shut in life had dwarfed the plant of genius, and the fruit refused to ripen. : She had starved herself, mentally and socially. She could not go forth in search of material, for home duties had strong claims still, and a certain selfish element had gradually grown up about her. While sheremainedat home, her hus- band and her sons had been out in the world, enjoying its pleasures, never thinking the wife and mother might have longings outside beyond the do- mestic hearth. John Denham forgot that his wife had been gifted with rare social quali- ties. He had come to think of her as did others, as a quiet little woman who never cared for society. It was years since he had seen her in evening dress. Indeed she had no use for one. Her voice of song, which he had once admired, was never heard now. It had gone, he supposed, with the other things which had belonged to youth. He told her sometimes of his friends, of the bright people he met from time to time. She listened passively and kept back the bitterness that crept into her heart. His friends—and she, Ins wife, was unknown to them! If he had read her thoughts he would IO A not have understood. That she could possibly care for the frivolities of life, for the fine gowns and jewels of the women he had met at the houses of his friends, would have surprised him. Was not the aim of her life to keep the household machinery in running order? Society was tiresome. Why should she care for it? Annis had one connection with her girlhood days—an old school friend, whose marriage had occurred soon af- ter her own. They had kept up a corre- spondence, though the letters had been few and far between, yet they served to keep the old friendship alive. They had met several times in the quarter cen- tury that had passed over their heads. Eleanor Bray had lived abroad many years. Annis had written bright, cheerful letters, keeping back much of her real life through pride. The friend of her girlhood should never know that the bright girl of years. ago, with her capabilities of enjoyment and rare social qualities, had settled down into a dull, spiritless woman hov- ering over the ashes of her own hfe. « Many a time the longing came for just one dash out into the world of brightness and sunshine, but it was only momentary; at heart she felt it could never be; she had lost the power of so- cial enjoyment, and shrank painfully from the thought & meeting the world again. | an It was a pitiful condition, and she realized that she had.brought herself to it through her own sensitive nature; yet she was not wholly to blame. She might have asserted her right to a place in the social world and have gone forth alone; there were women who did it, forced life to give them its fill of pleasure; but Annis could not. She came to feel that her husband did not want her, now that she had grown old and plain and had forgotten the ways of the world. John Denham would not have ac- knowledged this, but it was in a meas- CO ure true. His friends’ Wives were fond ae