Vanishing Point Read Online Free PDF

choose, and I suppose when I’m in my grave I shan’t mind, not even about my granny’s yellow cow that she used to allow me to stroke Sundays for a very particular treat. Oh, well, every dog has his day, as the saying is, and no use troubling oneself that I can see. Makes your blood go sour, and then what are you like to live with! Better laugh as long as you can and hold your tongue when you can’t!”
    He went up to Crewe House in the morning, and Rosamond let him in. He found Jenny bright-eyed, flushed, and very grown-up indeed.
    “How do you do, Mr. Lester? You must have thought it very silly of me yesterday to mistake you for a doctor, because of course you are not in the least like one. Rosamond has told me about your coming down from Pethertons, and she says I mustn’t expect you to publish anything. But then I never did— not really. Only you will talk to me about it, won’t you, and not just say it’s no use and I must wait till I’m older. You don’t know what a curse it is being young and have everybody say you can’t do any of the things you want to do because of it.”
    He said,
    “I shan’t do that, because there’s quite a lot you can do now, and I’d like to talk to you about it very much.”
    Her hands were at her breast, painfully clasped. The brilliant eyes answered. Rosamond, leaning over to lay a hand on her shoulder, was vehemently pushed away.
    “Well,” he said, “writing is a trade. If you want to write you’ll have to learn it. Take any conversation. There are the words, there is also the way the people look and move, and the tone of voice they use, and when you come to write that conversation down all you have got is the words. And they are not enough. Somehow, by hook or by crook, you have got to make up for the colour, the life, and the sound which you can’t transfer to paper.”
    “How?”
    “That’s what you’ll have to find out. For one thing, written dialogue has got to be better than the ordinary stuff that people talk. It must have more life and go in it. The colours must all be brightened. There must be more individuality. The clever people must be cleverer and the silly ones sillier than they would be in real life, or you won’t get them across at all, and your book will be dull. Then you want to watch your reading rather carefully. Don’t read too much of any one author, or you will find you are copying him, and that is fatal. You’ll have to read the standard authors, because they lay down a good foundation and you won’t be able to do without it. And as you read, just notice how they get people in and out of rooms, or from one place to another—how they produce what is called atmosphere—that sort of thing. They all do it different ways, so you won’t be in danger of copying any one in particular.”
    Jenny nodded vigorously.
    “And then—you probably won’t like this, but it’s important— write of things you know something about.”
    Jenny’s already feverish colour deepened.
    “If everyone did that, there would be a lot of dull books! I don’t want to write about the things that happen every day— I’m bored with them! What can I write about here?”
    Dangerous ground. He hastened away from it.
    “Well, you live in a village, and a village has people in it just the same as a town has, or a South Sea island, or a castle in Spain. It’s the people and what goes on in their lives that makes things interesting—or dull.”
    For the first time her hands relaxed. The flush began to fade. She said slowly,
    “Sometimes you can’t think what was in their minds. Nobody could with Maggie.”
    “Who is Maggie?”
    “A person in the village. She just walked out of the house one evening and never came back.”
    Rosamond threw him an uneasy glance. He ignored it.
    “Why did she do that?”
    “Nobody knows why.”
    He said, “Tell me about it in your own way—as if it was a story you were writing.”
    “I don’t know how to begin.”
    He