Like old Jolyon, he, too, at the bottom of his heart set the blame of
the tragedy down to family interference. What business had that lot--he
began to think of the Stanhope Gate branch, including young Jolyon and
his daughter, as 'that lot'--to introduce a person like this Bosinney
into the family? (He had heard George's soubriquet, 'The Buccaneer,' but
he could make nothing of that--the young man was an architect.)
He began to feel that his brother Jolyon, to whom he had always looked
up and on whose opinion he had relied, was not quite what he had
expected.
Not having his eldest brother's force of character, he was more sad than
angry. His great comfort was to go to Winifred's, and take the little
Darties in his carriage over to Kensington Gardens, and there, by the
Round Pond, he could often be seen walking with his eyes fixed anxiously
on little Publius Dartie's sailing-boat, which he had himself freighted
with a penny, as though convinced that it would never again come to
shore; while little Publius--who, James delighted to say, was not a bit
like his father skipping along under his lee, would try to get him to
bet another that it never would, having found that it always did. And
James would make the bet; he always paid--sometimes as many as three
or four pennies in the afternoon, for the game seemed never to pall
on little Publius--and always in paying he said: "Now, that's for your
money-box. Why, you're getting quite a rich man!" The thought of his
little grandson's growing wealth was a real pleasure to him. But little
Publius knew a sweet-shop, and a trick worth two of that.
And they would walk home across the Park, James' figure, with high
shoulders and absorbed and worried face, exercising its tall, lean
protectorship, pathetically unregarded, over the robust child-figures of
Imogen and little Publius.
But those Gardens and that Park were not sacred to James. Forsytes and
tramps, children and lovers, rested and wandered day after day, night
after night, seeking one and all some freedom from labour, from the reek
and turmoil of the streets.
The leaves browned slowly, lingering with the sun and summer-like warmth
of the nights.
On Saturday, October 5, the sky that had been blue all day deepened
after sunset to the bloom of purple grapes. There was no moon, and a
clear dark, like some velvety garment, was wrapped around the trees,
whose thinned branches, resembling plumes, stirred not in the still,
warm air. All London had poured into the Park, draining the cup of
summer to its dregs.