“Have you taken a look at these writings, Casaubon?” Mr. Brooke proposed.

“The Great War memorabilia, you speak of?”

“Yes, poems from Sassoon and Owen. What to make of these artists, you know, who were sent to defend our country.”

“All men were forced to go. Had my foot not been injured, I would have been among them.” Ladislaw said in a reproachful tone, “So many lives lost.” He added quietly.

Brooke had a momentary reflection on the poems.

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I thought of Sassoon’s The Rear-Guard. Automatically, I was in danger of dismissing the words altogether, convinced that the meaning had become diffused by mental conditions picked up in such situations as the ones that formed in my head from the letters I read. However, an echo of the words lingered in my mind causing me to shiver.

What kinds of men are these, I wondered. Where are their spirits? There comes a sort of nobility, you know, with this sort of responsibility- an honor. I didn’t mean as to anything objectionable, there was courage, a soldier requires courage, but the paper in my hand seemed to have more similarity with a poem from Poe than that of a soldier. It has the same sort of feel- and the knowledge that it the story came from a man’s eye rather than his mind makes my heart pace, my breath quicken. An idea, you know, differs from reality. I shuddered and shook the thought away, turning the page.

Glory of Women, the page read. But how gruesome, indeed! I did not have the heart to express the uncomfortable feeling that came over me as I read the poem. And is this title but a twisted sort of ode? I frowned and folded the paper into my pocket. There is no chance of my Dorothea and Celia reading this. They could not handle such an atrocity.

 

 

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