A strange silence fell. Someone stopped talking and stared. Someone else’s eyes followed the first stare. A couple stopped dancing. The music went on, but the people slowed, like moving toys that had run down, slowly, stopping.
Eugenie was halfway across the room, moving toward Marjorie. She would not go to Rigo, not publicly, she knew enough for that. She knew her public role was to be merely one of the group, a guest of the embassy, invited to participate in this gaiety. She smiled, holding out her hand as her companion passed the man near the door….
And Shevlok screamed as though his heart had been torn out.
“Janetta!”
Eugenie glanced behind her uncertainly; then, seeing that her companion followed still, she came on again, her face collapsing in doubt.
“Janetta!” Now the woman beside Marjorie, Geraldria bon Maukerden, cried out that name.
And uproar. At Marjorie’s side, Geraldria dropped her glass. It splattered into tinkling shards on the floor. The music faltered. Shevlok and Geraldria were both moving, like sleepwalkers, toward the girl, the strange girl.
Dimoth bon Maukerden was shouting, and Vince, his brother, and then others. The strange girl was surrounded, seized, though she did not react. She was passed from hand to hand, passive as a rag doll, looking toward Eugenie as though all her mind resided in the other woman, ending in Shevlok’s arms.
“What have you done to her?” It was Sylvan, beside Marjorie, demanding. “What have you done?”
“To Eugenie?”
“To Janetta. To the girl.”
“I never saw her before this moment!”
“That woman who has her. What didshedo?” And when Marjorie shook her head helplessly, he went on, “Find out, quickly, or we will all be throwing dead bats at one another.”
Marjorie had no time to ask him what he meant. And then Rigo was there, and were confronting Eugenie, who was crying and disclaiming any fault and making it hard for them by babbling but telling them nothing, nothing they could use against the mounting anger all around them.
“You filth, youfragras,”trumpeted Gustave bon Smaerlok. “What have you done to Janetta?”
“Silence,” bellowed Rigo, his voice shattering the other voices. “Silence!”
Then there was a little cup of quiet into which Eugenie’s voice splashed like the thin cold juice of a bitter fruit, “I got her in Commoner Town,” wailed Eugenie, “I got her from Jandra Jellico. All I did was make her a dress and fix her hair. She was just like this when I got her….”
Some few of the gathered aristocrats perceived that she was telling the truth, as much truth as she knew. Eugenie was as open as a child, weeping, not sure what it was she had done to make all this uproar. She had meant it as a surprise, bringing her pet to the ball. She had thought it would be fun.
“I told you we should stay far from this filth,” trumpeted Gustave once again, red of face, spittle at the corners of his mouth.
Rigo was in front of him. This could not be allowed to pass. “Filth?” he snarled. “What kind of filth allows their daughters to fall into such a state, for others to find, for others to rescue and clothe and feed? Hah?”
“Rigo!” Marjorie called, moving between the two angry men. “Obermun bon Smaerlok, we do no good to call one another names. You are all very upset. So are we.”
“Upset?” Dimoth cried. “My daughter!”
“Hear me!” Rigo thundered. “When did you see her last?”
There was silence, silence as each one contemplated an answer to that question. It had been— It had been last fall. Early last fall. She had disappeared last fall. No one wanted to say, to admit it had been that long ago.
“We heard of her disappearance,” Marjorie said. “It happened long before we ever left to come here. Before you had even given permission for us to come.”
The words hung there, unimpeachably true, Janetta had gone long before these people had come, Janetta, now standing at the middle of a small circle, dancing by herself, humming, lovely as a porcelain figure and as impersonal. Nothing in her face or glance spoke of a person being there. In the circle around her was Shevlok bon Damfels, no longer clinging to her.