Page:Poet Lore, volume 31, 1920.djvu/165

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But despite all his ingenious defence mechanism and pretended serenity of soul, he was most intimately attached to the memories of his past life with all its pains and disasters. As an example of this I refer to a few jottings entitled In the Attic (op. cit. p. 285 ff), the gist of which is as follows: Three years had passed since his marriage and now the storm had carried away all—his wife and child. One day he had occasion to go up into the attic. Here in the viscera of the house he found himself in the midst of the flotsam and jetsam of the wreck. There was the canopy of the marriage bed, the cradle, the milk bottle which she had washed with her small hands, there were the flower vases and withered flowers that came on the eve of their wedding, dried up bouquets and laurel wreaths, pieces of furniture belonging to the bride.

His eyes fell on a toy cupboard. It made him think of Christmas and of the beaming eyes of a child; it made him think of little milk teeth, a rocking-horse and dolls. He opened the toy cupboard. It contained a miniature phonograph which could utter but a single word. He wound it up. It hummed like a bee and then whispered the only word it knew: Darling. It was her voice. She had spoken it into the phonograph, but he had forgotten it. Darling. He cried to God; he raged against Fate; he fell to the ground. As he lay there he could only lament: