"I will do it. I'll find a plot. I'll dig in my brains right away—I'll hunt round."
"Off with you, then," said Tozer, "and send your luggage here and come back to-night with your plot. You can work in your bedroom and you can have all your meals here—I forgot to include that. Now I'm going to have a tune on the 'cello."
Bobby departed with a light heart. His position, before calling on Tozer, had really begun to weigh on him. Tozer had given him even more than the promise of financial support, he had given him the backing of his common sense. He had "jawed" him mildly, and Bobby felt all the better for it. It was like a tonic. His high spirits as he descended the stairs increased with every step taken.
Bobby was no sponge. Bridge and the relative had kept him going, and he had always managed to meet his debts, with the exception, perhaps, of a tradesman or two; nor would he have taken this favour from any other man than Tozer, and perhaps not even from Tozer had it not been accompanied by the "jawing."
So he set out, light of heart, young, good-looking, well-dressed, yet with only a sovereign, to hunt through the summer landscape of London for the plot for a novel.
Why, he was the plot for a novel, or at least the beginning of one, had he known!
He did not, but he had an intimate knowledge of Tozer's fictional proclivities and a fine understanding of exactly what Tozer wanted. Bones, ribs, and vertebra, construction—or, in other words, story. Tozer could not be fubbed off with fine writing, with long introspective chapters dealing with the boyhood of the author, with sham psychology masquerading as Fiction; nor, indeed, could Bobby have supplied the two latter features. Tozer wanted action, people moving on their feet under the dominion of the author's purpose, through situations, towards a definite goal.
Out in Vigo Street, and despite the aura of inspiration around the Bodley Head, Bobby's high spirits came slightly under eclipse; it all at once seemed to him that he had undertaken a task. In Cork Street, as he stood for a moment looking at the rare editions exposed in the windows of Elkin Mathews, this feeling grew and put on horns.
A task to Bobby meant a thing disagreeable to do, and the elegant volumes of minor poets, copies of the Yellow Book, and vellum-bound editions of belles lettres were saying to him, "You've got to write a novel, my boy, a good Mudie novel, the sort of novel the Tozers of life will pay for; no little essays written with the little finger turned up. No modern verses like your 'Harmonies and Discords,' that cost you twenty-five pounds to produce and sold sixteen copies of itself, according to last returns. You have got to be the harmonious blacksmith now; get into your apron, get under your spreading chestnut-tree, and produce."