And while Perdita raged in inward rebellion, the world, viewing things from the outside, took an entirely different view of her matter.
Popular opinion inclined to the belief that the good fairies had too heavily dowered this young woman at her cradle, and consequently a readjustment was inevitable, probably by the gracious means of ennobling tribulation. The dramatic event was rather eagerly anticipated. Not that envy had any part in it or that any of Perdita's friends or acquaintances wished to see a fellow being punished for the liberality of Providence. On the contrary. It was merely a sane desire to mark the balances of the universe in faultless equilibrium and to have the comforting assurance that the mills of the gods still ground with the proverbial exactness.
Youth, health, wealth, beauty, happiness, all unlimited! An exasperating spectacle! How could all be right with the world as long as Hebe continued to pour most of the nectar into one glass, while so many thirsty, deserving souls were denied even a sip?
And Perdita went her way and smiled alike on those who caviled and those who applauded. She had accepted her husband's friends as her own with a sort of careless, indifferent good nature and the relations existing between herself and the closely cemented little group were sufficiently harmonious under the circumstances. Maud Carmine and she had struck "leagues of friendship" at once, and Maud's prediction that Hepworth's friends would have to serve as Perdita's relatives would seem to have been verified.
And Maud, through constant association, appeared to have reflected some of Dita's beauty, for there was evidenced the most remarkable change in the plain Miss Carmine, her name no longer prefaced by that deplorable adjective, however. Alice Wilstead explained it by frankly giving the credit to Perdita. It was she, Alice asserted, who had had the faith and the courage to take Maud vigorously in hand and make of her a new creature as far as the outward presentment was concerned. The results had been so mutually satisfactory as to rivet the friendship between the two; for Dita had proved by her works her belief that there was not the faintest necessity for any such creature as an unattractive woman; and Maud, having lost all faith in the willingness of nature to better her original handiwork, had turned hopefully to art, with the result that she was now one of the most talked-of women in town. By men, because she had recently grown attractive enough for them to discover that she was also extremely agreeable and sympathetic. By women, because they ached to discover her secret. They remembered as easily as the men forgot that for twenty-eight years of her life Maud had been as a weed by the wall, a lank and sallow weed, oppressed by the sparseness of her leaves and the entire absence of either flowers or fruit, and suddenly she had acquired an art, an air, the trick of dress so subtle that it imparted distinction even to her worst points.
But when Perdita proceeded to verify, a little tardily, it is true, the hope of Mrs. Willoughby Hewston, sighingly expressed at the wedding breakfast, and furnished herself with a relative, the coterie gasped. It was not perhaps just the selection Mrs. Hewston would have made for her, but, nevertheless, Perdita had produced a relative, although, it must be confessed, of a rather dubious and indefinite nearness.
If Mrs. Hewston had been questioned on the subject she might have confessed that the relative she had in mind, as presenting an admirable background for a young and lovely girl, was either a silver-haired mother with a white lace cap, and a hair brooch fastening the snowy lawn collar of her black gown; or, in lieu of her, a maiden aunt. Indeed, had Mrs. Hewston been given free choice, she would have inclined toward the latter. Unquestionably, a maiden aunt is the best possible promoter of that nice sense of the proprieties, those right feelings and carefully graduated moral sentiments which are indispensable to a homeless, penniless young woman scrambling for a living. But Perdita, in presenting her relative, had almost flippantly disregarded these considerations involving a sense of universal fitness. It was a far cry, really an almost revolutionary distance, one felt, from the silver-haired mother or rather acid maiden aunt to Eugene Gresham. Eugene Gresham! Fancy!
For Eugene had returned to his native land with the recognition of Paris and London, even their acclaim—golden bay leaves and purple cloaks. Therefore was he thrice welcomed of New York. Therefore, the next presumption followed as naturally as the first. It was out of the question that Mrs. Hepworth, whose beauty was a matter of international comment, should lack a Gresham portrait, a distinction now unattainable save to those upon the mountain peaks of noble birth, enormous wealth, great achievement, remarkable beauty or superlative notoriety.
As Alice Wilstead pointed out, no one could cavil at any relative Mrs. Hepworth chose to set up, however regretable might be Perdita Carey's claim of kinship with this particular person, and she had certainly, as far as one knew, been discreet enough not to flaunt him during her scrambles. Now, as Mrs. Hepworth's cousin (how many times removed, dear?) he was one more jewel in her crown.
Mrs. Hewston sighingly acquiesced. "Yes, really. As Mrs. Hepworth's relative, yes. But hardly as the guide, philosopher and friend of youth, feminine youth, anyway." Only the happily married might safely claim him, for Gresham, with his fame as a painter of beautiful women and his almost equal reputation as a fascinating person, would not have been commended by any maiden aunt for either right feelings, nice moral sentiments or a discriminating taste for the proprieties.