or evil by intrusive report. He and each member of his family
owned it wholly, sanely, secretly, without any more interference from
the public than had been necessitated by their births, their marriages,
their deaths. And during these weeks of waiting and preparing to drop
the Law, he conceived for that Law a bitter distaste, so deeply did he
resent its coming violation of his name, forced on him by the need he
felt to perpetuate that name in a lawful manner. The monstrous injustice
of the whole thing excited in him a perpetual suppressed fury. He had
asked no better than to live in spotless domesticity, and now he must go
into the witness box, after all these futile, barren years, and proclaim
his failure to keep his wife--incur the pity, the amusement, the
contempt of his kind. It was all upside down. She and that fellow ought
to be the sufferers, and they--were in Italy! In these weeks the Law he
had served so faithfully, looked on so reverently as the guardian of all
property, seemed to him quite pitiful. What could be more insane than
to tell a man that he owned his wife, and punish him when someone
unlawfully took her away from him? Did the Law not know that a man's
name was to him the apple of his eye, that it was far harder to be
regarded as cuckold than as seducer? He actually envied Jolyon the
reputation of succeeding where he, Soames, had failed. The question of
damages worried him, too. He wanted to make that fellow suffer, but he
remembered his cousin's words, "I shall be very happy," with the uneasy
feeling that to claim damages would make not Jolyon but himself suffer;
he felt uncannily that Jolyon would rather like to pay them--the chap
was so loose. Besides, to claim damages was not the thing to do. The
claim, indeed, had been made almost mechanically; and as the hour
drew near Soames saw in it just another dodge of this insensitive and
topsy-turvy Law to make him ridiculous; so that people might sneer
and say: "Oh, yes, he got quite a good price for her!" And he gave
instructions that his Counsel should state that the money would be given
to a Home for Fallen Women. He was a long time hitting off exactly the
right charity; but, having pitched on it, he used to wake up in
the night and think: 'It won't do, too lurid; it'll draw attention.
Something quieter--better taste.' He did not care for dogs, or he would
have named them; and it was in desperation at last--for his knowledge of
charities was limited--t