“My dear little girl! You’ll catch your death like that! Do please dry your feet and put your boots on. You’ll worry your mother.”
Moril felt sorry for Brid. Then he suddenly felt even more—desperately—sorry for himself. He needed to be somewhere else, out in the open. He looked round wildly, upward, everywhere. And a sturdy creeper growing up the thick yellow wall of the house gave him an idea. He slung himself onto it and started to climb.
It was extremely easy, except for the last bit, which needed a long stride and a heave across some crumbly stonework. Then he was on the wide, leaded roofs. It was splendid. Moril looked round, into the town, out across the valley, and over to valleys beyond. He turned north and looked at the misty blue peaks there, where he had so longed to go, and Kialan—lucky Kialan!—was going soon. But that made him sad. So, presently, Moril began to patter about across the leads and among the chimneys. He skirted courtyards and looked down into the gardens. Then he ran along a narrow part to another wing and looked down into another court.
And there was Ganner, horrified and gesturing below. “Come down! Come down at once!”
Moril looked. There was a lead pipe and an easy flight of windows. Obediently he swung his legs over the edge of the roof.
Ganner stopped him with a hoarse shriek. “No! Stop! Do you want to break your neck? Wait!” He ran away and presently ran back with a crowd of men carrying a ladder. With them ran a group of horrified maids, and the old nurse, wringing her hands.
“My duck! Oh my duck!”
Moril sat sadly on the edge of the roof, swinging his legs and watching them all pothering with the ladder. He knew what was wrong with Ganner now. He was a fusspot.
The ladder finally thumped against the wall beside him. “You can come down now,” Ganner called. “Go very carefully.”
Moril sighed and got onto the ladder. He came down rather slowly out of sheer perverseness. He decided when he got near enough he would say to Ganner, “But you told me I could go anywhere I wanted.” When he judged he was low enough for it to be most effective, he turned round to say it.
A man was just coming in through the door to the courtyard—a fair man with light, untrustworthy eyes, who checked for a moment when he saw Moril twenty feet up a long ladder, staring at him. Shrugging slightly, the man strolled over to Ganner and said something to him. Ganner replied. The man shrugged again, said another w
ord or so to Ganner, and strolled out of the courtyard.
Moril forgot what he intended to say. Instead, as soon as he was down on the ground, he said, “Who was that man here just now? The fair one, who spoke to you.”
Ganner looked uneasy, so uneasy that Moril’s chest went tight and he felt sick. “Oh—er—just someone who’s my guest here,” said Ganner. “Now you are absolutely not to get on the roof again! It’s extremely high, and the leads are quite unsafe. You might have been killed!”
“Killed, my duck!” said his nurse.
Moril bore with a long scold from both Ganner and the nurse, without listening to a word. Both of them would have scolded anyway, but Moril was fairly sure that Ganner was scolding mostly as an excuse not to discuss the fair man. Moril did not want to discuss him. His one desire was to get away and find Lenina.
Lenina was in the great hall of the house. Presumably it was the same place where Clennen had sung and then played the trick on Ganner seventeen years before. Lenina was gaily organizing the tables for the wedding feast, and doing it as if she had done nothing else all her life. Moril had to pull her sleeve to get her to attend to him.
“Mother! One of the men who killed Father! He’s staying here.”
“Oh, Moril, don’t interrupt me with stupid stories!” Lenina said impatiently.
“But I saw him,” said Moril.
“You must have made a mistake,” said Lenina. She pulled her sleeve away and went back to the tables.
Moril stood, shocked and troubled, in the middle of the hall. He saw quite clearly that his mother did not want to believe him. She had put Clennen and all that part of her life behind her and she did not want to be reminded of it. Yet if Ganner had had a hand in killing Clennen, this was the last place she ought to be—the last place any of them ought to be. Moril looked at gay, busy Lenina, shook his head desolately, and hurried away to find Brid.
Brid was hurrying through the garden in the opposite direction. “Moril—!”
“One of the men who killed Father,” said Moril. “He’s staying here.”
“I know. I saw him,” said Brid. “Did you try to tell Mother?”
“Yes. She wouldn’t listen.”
“She wouldn’t listen to me either,” said Brid. “She doesn’t want to know, I think. Moril, what are we going to do? We can’t stay here, can we? Do you think Ganner had Father killed?”
Moril thought about it. He remembered that though Ganner had obviously been very pleased to see Lenina, he had not perhaps been entirely surprised. And he did not like it at all. “I don’t know. He could have done. Only he’s a bit too feeble to think of it, isn’t he?”
“And why not do it years ago if he felt that bad about Father stealing Mother off him?” said Brid. “But I don’t care whether he did or not. I’m not staying here, and that’s final!”
“Mother is staying,” said Moril. “I’m afraid that’s final, too.”