Mr. Fletcher, in the exercise of that unprejudiced good sense to which, as well as to his social sense, he owed his legal prominence, was not at all sure that much good would come of Ivor’s explorations as a writer of prose. Certain stories and essays of his that he had read had seemed to him, though rather remarkable for their polish, not the stuff of a writer, as such; but rather of a young man with whom writing was merely a reflection of his leisure, whereas his main concern hovered about the business of life—or of love, he shouldn’t wonder! Also, and particularly in the bravura essays on The Decline of Humour and The Function of Daggers, Mr. Fletcher had been disconcerted by a calm and detached arrogance which, he thought, was confoundedly irritating in a young man who couldn’t, possibly, really know anything. “Parlourtricks!” said Aunt Percy. “Standing on your head! All this theoretical stuff....”
“It’ll run away with you, I shouldn’t wonder,” said Mr. Fletcher.
“I wish to God it would!” Ivor suddenly let himself go. “I wouldn’t mind if it was a Carter Patterson van that ran away with me, so long as something did.”
“There’s a man in a new book by Arnold Bennett,” Aunt Percy thoughtfully said, “who was run away with by a Pantechnicon. I don’t remember what happened.”
“It probably ran away with Arnold Bennett until the end of the book,” Ivor suggested nastily.
“In that case,” said Mr. Fletcher shortly, “you had better dine with me. And you might shorten that long face of yours too, young man, for I’ve no mind to waste my dinner in front of some one who looks like an epitaph—and me with one foot down with gout and the other in the grave!”
And so they would dine, about once a fortnight during those two years following Aunt Moira’s death. And sometimes went on to a play, but more frequently sat on and talked, in Mr. Fletcher’s celibate house in Green Street: about dead men, of whom Aunt Percy had known so many, and about books that never die, about which the ci-devant fast-bowler knew a good deal more than fast-bowlers are commonly supposed to know.
And throughout that time the old man, with a restraint quite remarkable in one of his years, directed and advised his young friend as little as he might; just “letting him be,” as Lady Moira had instructed him, to find his bent and feet and friends in his own way. Only once did he visit him in the chambers off Saint James’s Square which he had found for him, saying that they would “do” for him until he came of age; and was extremely surprised and almost displeased at the vast amount of books with which Ivor’s rooms were encumbered. He had known that Ivor spent a great deal of money on books—“But I didn’t realise,” said Aunt Percy, “that you went on and on buying them. You’ll have a lot of knowledge to get rid of, young man....”
Mr. Fletcher came away from his one visit to Ivor’s chambers wondering what influences would finally take the boy out of his solitude and an old man’s company. “Those books are not natural for a boy who took such trouble to get kicked out of school,” thought Mr. Fletcher, as he walked slowly along Jermyn Street, which was always a favourite street of his: an unusually tall and upright old gentleman, magnificently hatted, and easily imaginable as having been a very fast-bowler indeed in his time.