Not many English tourists go out of their way to visit Louvain, even
though it has a Hotel de Ville surpassing even that of Brussels itself,
and though one can get there in an hour from that city of youth and
pleasure. And there are no English residents at all in the place--at
least, none in evidence, though perhaps there may be some who have gone
there for the same reasons which led Mr. William Linville and his wife
to choose this spot--in order to be private and secluded. There are
many more people than we know of who desire, above all things,
seclusion and retirement, and dread nothing so much as a chance meeting
with an old friend.
Mr. William Linville took a small house, furnished, like the cottage at
Passy, and, also like that little villa, standing in its own garden.
Here, with a cook and a maid, Iris set up her modest menage. To ask
whether she was happy would be absurd. At no time since her marriage
had she been happy; to live under the condition of perpetual
concealment is not in itself likely to make a woman any the happier.
Fortunately she had no time to experience the full bitterness of the
plan proposed by her husband.
Consider. Had their scheme actually been carried out quite
successfully, this pair, still young, would have found themselves
condemned to transportation for life. That was the first thing. Next,
they could never make any friends among their own countrymen or
countrywomen for fear of discovery. Iris could never again speak to an
English lady. If they had children the risk would appear ten times more
terrible, the consequences ten times more awful. The children
themselves would have to grow up without family and without friends.
The husband, cut off from intercourse with other men, would be thrown
back upon himself. Husband and wife, with this horrible load laid upon
them, would inevitably grow to loathe and hate the sight of each other.
The man would almost certainly take to drink: the woman--but we must
not follow this line any further. The situation lasted only so long as
to give the wife a glimpse of what it might become in the future.
They took their house, and sat down in it. They were very silent. Lord
Harry, his great coup successfully carried so far, sat taciturn and
glum. He stayed indoors all day, only venturing out after dark. For a
man whose whole idea of life was motion, society, and action, this
promised ill.
The monotony was first broken by the arrival of Hugh's letter, which
was sent in with other documents from Passy. Iris read it; she read it
again, trying to understand exactly what it meant. Then she tore it up.
"If he only knew," she said, "he would not have taken the trouble even
to write this letter. There is no answer, Hugh. There can be none--now.
Act by your advice? Henceforth, I must act by order. I am a
conspirator."