Once or twice Eugenia stumbled, not because there were difficulties in her way but because she was thinking so deeply. What could be the trouble with her nature? As she was in a mood of severe truthfulness with herself she realized that no one had ever loved her a great deal in her entire life.
Left an orphan when she was a few years old, she could not recall her mother or father. Of course, her Aunt Rebecca, who had brought her up, had been reasonably fond of her. But Eugenia was convinced that she had never been an attractive child.
Yet why, tonight of all nights, should she fall to thinking of herself? And why in this darkness and in a foreign land should she have such a clear vision of the little girl in the old New England town?
One thing she recalled most distinctly: she must have always looked old. Strangers used to discuss her and people used always to expect more from her than from the other children of the same age. Moreover, she had always been painfully shy and this shyness had colored her whole life.
As a child she simply had to pretend to feel superior and to be serious-minded, because she did not know how to play and laugh like the others did. Since she had been grown up, and for the same reason, she had gone on behaving in the same way.
Often here in Europe with the other Red Cross girls she had wished to be as gay and nonsensical as they were. Yet she never knew how to relax into a frivolous mood.
Once the tears actually started into Eugenia’s dark eyes. She realized that now and then she had even been jealous of her three companions. Nona and Barbara were so pretty and charming and Mildred had qualities finer than these two possessions. Besides, the three girls made her feel so dreadfully old. This is never an agreeable sensation after twenty, however much the teens may aspire to appear elderly. Then Eugenia managed to smile at herself, although it was a kind of twisted smile. It occurred to her to wonder if she had failed to like Barbara Meade because it was Barbara who had first suggested that she must be a great deal older than the rest of them.
Deliberately Eugenia now began to walk slowly. She did not wish to arrive at home in her present mood. Having passed through the fields, she was now on her way through the lane that led through an open woods directly to the “House with the Blue Front Door.” Dozens of times Eugenia had made this trip in the daytime, but a country road has a very different appearance at night. Moreover, the trees made the lane seem far darker than the path through the open fields.
It was stupid not to have brought her electric flashlight! However, nothing had so far disturbed Eugenia’s progress. Not one wayfarer or soldier out upon leave had she encountered, although the neighborhood was thickly populated with men and women living on the outskirts of the entrenchments.
Eugenia hoped that if she should meet a passerby he might be a soldier. There were but few of them who would not respect her uniform. However, she was beginning to forget her previous nervousness, for this lane was not a frequently traveled one. It merely led past their little house into the heavier woods beyond, where Barbara and Nona had told of their discovery of the deserted hut and the pool of Melisande.