Milford High School - Oak Lily and Ivy Yearbook (Milford, MA)

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THE OAK, LILY AND IVY. 23 heavens. The stars up there were twinkling. They were not warm and friendly. They were not cold and disapproving. They were merely remote, wholly unsug- gestive of any sort of intimacy between my sphere and theirs. I ran my eyes over that great expanse of sky, sky, sky. How utterly alone I was! The universe seemed the gigantic scheme of some great juggernaut who did not care for me. I was but a witful amoeba carelessly tossed into the middle of a great onrushing flood-swollen river. I was a mad creature in a cell not padded, but with iron walls. Oh, how I felt the oppressiveness of mortal existence! My affairs did not matter at all, but I wanted them to matter. O, Fred -. Fate, Fred, is peculiar. Fate sent you into my office this morning with a great burden on your heart. It sent you out comforted. It sent me into my garden tonight quite at peace. And it has sent me out of it raving. Listen, Fred: The only reason for my irritability during the past few weeks has been the ex¬ cessive amount of work that I have forced myself to do in preparation for that Harrowby trial. Morrow is a hard attorney to defeat. I’m going to ask you to take that case for me, for I shall not be here when it comes up. I see no reason for prolonging the existence of an amoeba. I am writing this in my study, but I shan’t do the deed here. I’ll be, as you would say, “half-decently reticent” about the affair. The deed will be done out in the garden after I have posted this letter to you. Goodbye, Fred. I’m sorry that I could not regard the heavens with your eyes. BOB. Robert Cenedella, ’28. THE INHERITANCE. The icy wind swept up the steep hill. The drenching rain fell in torrents, while in the dark castle all was silent. Suddenly a moan was heard in the dis¬ tance. It steadily increased in volume until it could rightly be called a scream. A thin figure jumped from the covered davenport and hurried out into a dimly lit hall. Silence, then was heard a sound of running feet, a thud, a diabolical laugh. Then silence again. Into the drawing room slouched a bent ragged-haired being, dragging along his burden. He laid it on the davenport and vanished as if in mid-air. In the distance one heard the noise of a heavy door slowly closing. i Although there were gleams of sunlight throughout the dark castle, it ap¬ peared forbidding and dismal to the two young people standing on its shadowy threshold. “Oh, Tim, how terribly gloomy it is. Listen to the river. Why it is the only happy living thing around. Let’s go and see that first.” So the two walked away, down over the steep bank and rocks to the river. Behind them stood the grim stone castle as if overshadowing their youth and vitality. “Well, Dicky-girl, what do you think of this half of my inheritance?” asked the young man as he leaped expertly onto a large rock on the very edge of the river. He turned and held out brown lean hands to help his companion as she also leaped forward, but not until she had gained a good foothold did she answer him.

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22 THE OAK, LILY AND IVY. THE IMMENSITY OF SPACE. August 8, 1926. Dear Fred:— Remember this morning? You came into my office and told me to relieve myself by telling my troubles to you. “What,” you asked me, “is the matter with you lately? You’re jumpy. You’re irritable. You’re grouchy. You don’t come to see your old friends any more. Can’t you tell me, Bob? It may help, getting it off your chest, old man.” And I answered, “No, I can’t tell even you, Fred.” “But even so,” you told me, “you mustn’t let this hypochondria go on. It retards your work. Talk to me. Talk anything,—philosophy, law, divorce, love. Talk all that hellish frenzy right out of your system. Tell me about the Harrow- by case. Anything, only talk.” To this I made a general observation. “People don’t like to talk of their troubles, and if they have troubles, they can talk of them or of nothing.” “Then you won’t talk? Its for your own good, Bob.” “I’m afraid not, this morning.” “You ought to tell something to some of your friends. We’re worrying. Hang it, Bob—“you were suddenly angry—“you’re not the only one who has troubles. Other people either don’t display theirs or they display them with half-decent reticence.” Something in the way you said this made me look up. I had only to look at your twisted mouth and brooding eyes, Fred, to know that there was some¬ thing bothering you, that you had troubles far greater than mine. “Sit down, Fred.” I tried to be gentle but decidedly firm with you. “Now, what’s itching you?” You smiled weakly at my unwonted use of slang, and ineffectually you pro¬ tested that nothing was bothering you. But I insisted that there was something, and finally you broke down and cried—remember? You cried, Fred, like a baby, and finally you confessed to me your tragic affair with Judith. I admitted that I had been out of touch with affairs and that I had heard nothing of this. I was all sympathy for you, Fred, and I still am. Having unburdened your heart, you seemed quite calm. It was to be ex¬ pected that you would be relieved, but you were so calm! It seemed unnatural after the sad tale that you had unfolded. It was ghastly. And I questioned you; don’t you remember, Fred? 1 How, I asked, “can you appear so undisturbed now, after the recital of your tribulations? How have you been so calm al l these months?” And, rather dramatically, you answered my latter question. The sky, Bob,” you exclaimed, and you repeated it. “The sky! Whenever I become oppressed with the world, with financial difficulties, or with my greatest source of mental suffering, I go out and look up at the heavens, I contemplate the vastness of this universe, the immensity of space, and the thought naturally follows, What a maggot I am!’ My troubles drift away to nothingness. I was interested. I advise you,” you told me, “to try that method in attempting to remove this nameless oppression of yours.” I hen you left. You remember all this, don’t you, Fred? Is it not as I have set it down? Well, I have followed your advice, Fred. At seven o’clock tonight, I ventured into my wife’s little garden, and, alone there in the dark, I regarded the

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24 THE OAK, LILY AND IVY. Then brushing her short light brown hair out of her hazel eyes, she looked about her. “What a gorgeous place! Oh, look at the lovely birch trees, and over there, that marvelous pine grove. I’ll wager one can get a fine view from that window,” she added, pointing to a large French window high up in the castle and right over the river. “Gee, Dicky, how you do jump around in your conversation. Well, come on, we’ll have to go over part of the castle before the workers from the village arrive. I believe I’ll have all the rooms cleaned, for I guess they’ll need it.” As they worked their way back, they continued their inspection. Tim pointed out to the girl many well known landmarks. “See, Dicky, there is the family graveyard. Over there in that small cot¬ tage lives a hermit. Boy, didn’t he hate us because we lived here! He hates anyone who even enters the castle.” They raced each other up the steep banks to the castle. As they reached the door, the girl hung back as though some ill foreboding breath of air had whispered something repugnant to her. But, perhaps not to be outdone by her friend, or perhaps, more truely, not wishing to stay alone in the strange, unusual, formidable surroundings, she entered the ancient house with an unfathomable apprehension. Tim stepped in ahead of her. He immediately hurried down the hall to the kitchen and began foraging manfashion in a large pantry. “Oh, heck! All of mother’s preserves are gone, and I know when I was camping up here for a few days last fall, there were about a dozen jars left.” “Never mind, Tim. You most likely ate them, or perhaps some of your old chums who knew about them came by, forced their way in, and helped them¬ selves during their stay.” Just then they heard the workers arriving, and they hastened to greet them and give them some orders concerning the future work. As Tim entered the drawing room, he noticed footmarks on the rug. He asked Dicky if she had come in ahead of him., but she answered in the negative. He discovered that the footmarks led up to the davenport and then he noticed its burden. Dicky stopped, turned pale, then hurried forward and examined the piti¬ ful form. Her nursing training now stood her in good stead as she again examined the body. ? It only a child and he was killed by a blow of a dagger from behind. Oh! she added vindictively, “How I would like to get my hands on that cowardly, hateful murderer!” As she stood there, she noticed that a ray of sunlight had filtered in through the dusty windows across the dingy rug spattered with blood. It had stopped at the motionless corpse on the davenport as if to make a bridge by which the soul of the victim might pass from this world into the celestial world above. She shuddered, then turned, and quickly left the room. One of the men recognized the child as one of the children of a well known family in the village. I he child was considered strange because he was always administering to the sick instead of running and playing like others of his age. They immediately formed a searching party to go through the castle and see what other horrors, if any, it held. They searched the first floor methodically, going through the dim dusky mysterious rooms. They found nothing. 1 hey started on the second floor, but before they had gone far in the search, they were stopped by a scream from one of the nearby rooms. They all stood