Eagle in the Sky - Smith Wilbur - Страница 77

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sounds, the night was cool.  Debra wore a cashmere sweater over her

shoulders, and David had thrown on his flying jacket.

The letter lay against his heart, and it seemed to burn into his flesh.

He unbuttoned the leather flap and took it out.  While Debra chatted

happily beside him, spreading her hands to the crackling leaping flames,

David examined the envelope turning it slowly over and over in his

hands.

Then suddenly, as though it were.  a live scorpion, he threw it from him

and watched it blacken and curl and crumple to ash in the flames of the

fire.

It was not so easily done, however, and that night as he lay awake, the

words of the letter marched in solemn procession through his brain,

meticulously preserved and perfectly remembered.  They gave him no

respite, and though his eyes were gravelly and his head ached with

fatigue, he could not sleep.

During the days that followed he was silent and edgy.

Debra sensed it, despite all his efforts to conceal it and she was

seriously alarmed, believing that he was angry with her.  She was

anxiously loving, distracted from all else but the need to find and cure

the cause of David's ills.

Her concern only served to make David's guilt deeper.

Almost in an act of desperation they drove one evening down to the

String of Pearls, and leaving the Land Rover they walked hand in hand to

the water's edge.

They found a fallen log screened by reeds and sat quietly together.  For

once neither of them had anything to say to each other.

As the big red sun sank to the tree-tops and the gloom thickened amongst

the trees of the grove, the nyala herd came stepping lightly and

fearfully through the shadows.

David nudged Debra, and she turned her head into a listening attitude

and moved a little closer to him as he whispered.

They are really spooky this evening, they look as though they are

standing on springs and I can see their muscles trembling from here. The

old bulls seem to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown, they are

listening so hard their ears have stretched to twice their usual length,

I swear.  There must be a leopard lurking along the edge of the reed

bed, he broke off, and exclaimed softly, oh, so that's it?" "What is it,

David?" Debra tugged at his arm insistently, her curiosity spurring her.

A new fawn!  David's delight was in his voice.  One of the does has

lambed.  Oh God, Debra!  His legs are still wobbly and he is the palest

creamy beige- He described the fawn to her as it followed the mother

unsteadily into the open.  Debra was listening with such intensity, that

it was clear the act of birth and the state of maternity had touched

some deep chord within her.

Perhaps she was remembering her own dead infant.  Her grip on his arm

tightened, and her blind eyes seemed to glow in the gathering dusk, and

suddenly she spoke.

Her voice low, but achingly clear, filled with all the longing and

sadness which she had suppressed.

I wish I could see it, she said.  Oh God!  God Let me see.  Please, let

me see!  and suddenly she was weeping, great racking sobs that shook her

whole body.

Across the pool the nyala herd took fright, and dashed away among the

trees.  David took Debra and held her fiercely to his chest, cradling

her head, so her tears were wet and cold through the fabric of his

shirt, and he felt the icy winds of despair blow across his soul.

He re-wrote the letter that night by the light of a gas lamp while Debra

sat across the room knitting a jersey she had promised him for the

winter and believing that he was busy with the estate accounts.  David

found that he could repeat the words of the ari nal letter perfectly and

it took him only a few minutes to complete and seal it.

Are you working on the book tomorrow morning?  he asked casually, and

when she told him she was, he went on.  I have to nip into Nelspruit for

an hour or two.

David flew high as though to divorce himself from the earth.  He could

not really believe he was going to do it.  He could not believe that he

was capable of such sacrifice.  He wondered whether it was really

possible to love somebody so deeply that he would chance destroying that

love for the good of the other, and he knew that it was, and as he flew

on southwards he found that he could face it at last.

Of all persons, Debra needed her vision, for without it the great wings

of her talent were clipped.  Unless she could see it, she could not

describe it.  She had been granted the gift of the writer, and then half

of it had been taken from her.  He understood her cry, Oh God!

God!  Let me see.  Please, let me see, and he found himself wishing it

for her also.  Beside her need his seemed trivial and petty, and

silently he prayed.

Please God, let her see again He landed the Navajo at the airstrip and

called the taxi and had it drive him directly to the Post Office, and

wait while he posted the letter and collected the incoming mail from the

box.

Where now?  the driver asked as he came out of the building, and he was

about to tell him to drive back to the airfield when he had inspiration.

Take me down to the bottle store, please, he told the driver and he

bought a case of Veuve Clicquot champagne.

He flew homewards with a soaring lightness of the spirit.  The wheel was

spinning and the ball clicking, nothing he could do now would dictate

its fall.  He was free of doubt, free of guilt, whatever the outcome, he

knew he could meet it.

Debra sensed it almost immediately, and she laughed aloud with relief,

and hugged him about the neck.

But what happened?  she kept demanding.  For weeks you were miserable. I

was worrying myself sick, and then you go off for an hour or two and you

come back humming like a dynamo.  What on earth is going on, Morgan?  I

have just found out how much I love you, he told her, returning her hug.

Plenty?  she demanded.  Plenty!  he agreed.  That's my baby!  she

applauded him.

The Veuve Clicquot came in useful.  in the batch of mail that David

brought back with him from Nelspruit was a letter from Bobby Dugan.  He

was very high on the first chapters of the new novel that Debra had

airmailed to him, and so were the publishers; he had managed to hit them

for an advance of $100,000 .

You're rich!  David laughed, looking up from the letter.

The only reason you married me, agreed Debra.  Fortune hunter!  but she

was laughing with excitement, and David was proud and happy for her.

They like it, David.  Debra was serious then.  They really like it.  I

was so worried.  "The money was meaningless, except as a measure of the

book's value.  Big money is the sincerest type of praise.

They would have to be feeble-minded not to like it, David told her, and

then went on.  It just so happens that I have a case of French champagne

with me, shall I put a bottle or ten on the ice?

Morgan, man of vision, Debra said.  At times like this, I know why I

love you.  The weeks that followed were as good then as they had ever

been.  David's appreciation was sharper, edged by the storm shadows on

the horizon, the time of plenty made more poignant by the possibility of

the drought years coming.  He tried to draw it out beyond its natural

time.  It was five weeks more before he flew to Nelspruit again, and

then only because Debra was anxious to learn of any further news from

her publishers and agent, and to pick up her typing.

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