THE PROFESSOR
In Memoriam
Lugete o pueri et genus togatum
Et quaecumque canes amant puellae,
Ille emortuus est canis fidelis,
Huius deliciae scholae decusque,
Qui vix inferior domus magistro
Formabat pueros sagax Agelli.
Ast omnes studio pari ciebat
Praesens Marlburios favente cauda,
Qui propellere vel manu volantem
Vel saevis pedibus pilam studebant,
Exemplo aut tacito coarguebat
Si quem dedecuit piger veternus
Nam raptas modo quattuor superbus
Mala continuit pilas minore,
Elatrans modo equum procax anhelum
Morsu callidiore persecutus.
At liberrimus usque sic vagari
Per campum solitus viasque nostras,
Indignans Anatis tulisse vincla
Innexo laqueo miser peremptus
Aeterno dominum obruit dolore.[1]
M.
BANDY, the friend and hero of three generations of Marlborough boys, was of the spirit of the age in which he lived. With a decorous respect for the sober business of the classrooms, it was in the playing fields that his prowess was displayed. Cricket was for him the absorbing interest from the early days of his puppyhood to the closing hours of his life. Football and hockey had a lesser place in his affections, and the Racquet Court came in occasionally for patronage. Of the School Rifle Corps he was an enthusiastic and exemplary member, and even illness would not keep him from his place in the corps, when the delights of a Field Day were in prospect.
In private life Bandy was a Dandie Dinmont, who came into the possession of the master of Littlefield, one of the Marlborough boarding houses, when he was only a few weeks old. As there were some fifty boys at Littlefield, and no other dog was kept in the house, Bandy was from the first thrown greatly into the society of humans, and throughout his life he always showed a preference for their companionship to that of those of his own kind.
Bandy made his first acquaintance with cricket in the summer term that followed his arrival at the school. His master, who used to coach at the cricket nets in the school playing field, was in the habit of taking the puppy with him and tying him up in full view of all that was going on. With growing interest Bandy watched the proceedings, and so well did he respond to his early training that the love of the game developed into a passion with him when he had come to years of discretion. He grew to be one of the most enthusiastic and untiring of fieldsmen, and for a long succession of summer terms he was seldom absent, morning or afternoon, from the Littlefield practice net. He generally stood in the long field, and would work himself to a state of complete exhaustion in retrieving the balls.
The Professor
BANDY
In this, his chosen work, Bandy showed a nice discrimination. He only worked for his own house. Balls hit from other nets might fly past him, or even roll to his feet, but of these he took no heed. His fielding was for those of his own house party, though he recognised the claims of the school nets reserved for the XI and XXII, and professional bowlers, and showed his recognition in a manner all his own. He himself was always up to time, and if his house contingent were late he would enter a protest against their slackness by taking his services for that hour to the aristocrats of the cricket field. Yet here the nets had drawbacks from Bandy’s point of view. Being longer and higher than the ordinary house nets, the ball was seldom hit outside them, and in consequence there was but little fielding to be done. But Bandy made the best of things. Taking no notice for the time being of his usual allies, he would stand behind the wicket of his chosen comrades, and leap at the balls, not yet past the bat, or as they struck the net. He would even venture inside and stand near in on the off, with eyes fixed, as a fieldsman’s should be, not on the bowler but on the bat.
This habit nearly brought Bandy’s career to an untimely end. The captain of the XI drove a ball low down on the off right, that came straight at him. Bandy watched its course without flinching, and met it full on his head. As he rolled over, the game was forgotten, and the players rushed to his assistance. As his master was coming on to the field he met the poor little sufferer being carried tenderly home. He was apparently dying. In a few hours, however, he rallied a little, and during the night so far recovered consciousness as to take some nourishment from the hands of a devoted nurse. He was still alive when his master went into school at 10 o’clock on the following morning, but it seemed scarcely possible that he could recover. Soon after twelve, when his owner went into the cricket field, an excited boy rushed up to him with the question, “Have you heard about Bandy, sir?” As there seemed only one possible reason for such a query, the master responded sadly with the one word, “Dead?” “Not a bit of it,” was the astounding answer, “he’s fielding inside the net.”
After this, life without a ball for Bandy was incomplete. Though a cricket ball was his first love, it was not by any means the only one. Any ball not in play he regarded as fair game. In the cricket season, as he sometimes strolled with seeming innocence about the field, he would search the pockets of any coat that had been thrown on the ground in the hope of finding the thing he loved so well. Or from the Fives or Racquet Court, he would carry off any spare balls he might come across, and stoutly maintain his right to them. His master was not infrequently met with a request from one of the suffering owners, “Please, sir, would you speak to Bandy? He has bagged my Fives balls.”
Sunday, a day that never appealed to Bandy, was that in which he often turned his attention to possible balls. In the summer he would spend hours quartering the fringe of long grass that surrounds the cricket grounds in which balls were often lost. If Bandy came across an old one, a useless “pudding,” he would proceed to gnaw it to pieces then and there, but if he found a new one he would straightway carry it to his master’s study, which he always regarded as his treasure-house.
That in the opinion of his Marlborough friends Bandy was “more than brute, if less than man,” the following school story will show. In this case, I fear, I cannot go quite so far as those who knew him better and whose faith in his powers was boundless. While Bandy was an interested spectator of a cricket match he would gradually get nearer and nearer to the scoring board, with the object, as his friends declared, of seeing how they had acquitted themselves. If when the numbers went up they showed that a boy had made a good innings, Bandy would sometimes walk down the steps from the pavilion to meet him, and accompany him back with applauding barks.
No wonder that with such belief in his powers Bandy was honoured by his friends in a way surely no little dog has ever been before. The Latin verse at the beginning of this chapter speaks for itself, it—and the translation—was written by Mr. F. B. Malin. From the pen of another friend, Mr. F. Bain, come the delightful lines:
IN MEMORY OF THE VALIANT LITTLE DOG,
BANDY
Alas! and art thou really dead,
Quaint, semi-human quadruped?
And dost thou sit on Pluto’s coast,
A pallid little bandy ghost;
Gone, little friend, away from us,
Compatriot now of Cerberus,
And shall we never see thee more
Barking about the Rifle Corps?
And wilt thou never now explain
Thy base attack on Mr. Swain?
Shall the old nag now munch his meals,
Nor feel thee biting at his heels?
At football shalt thou ne’er be found,
Snuffing at every inch of ground
Along those touch-lines, where we know
Thou found’st a mouse long years ago?
Never in court shall we now pass
Thy sturdy figure on the grass,
Fives balls protruding from its jaws,
And racquet balls between its paws.
Never again shall we now meet
Thee, Bandy, trotting down the street;
See thee turn over on thy back,
And, deep down in thy throat, alack!
Behold, defended by thy grin,
Our cricket ball, thou dog of sin!
Who can forget the solemn way
Thou mapped’st out thy every day?
Thy daily round, thy common task,
Furnished far more than most dogs ask.
The cricket net, the football match,
The racquet court, those hours thou’dst snatch,
When masters are in cap and gown,
To do thy duty by the town.
Yet was there one day, Bandy, one day,
When life was dull, and that was Sunday.
No interest, poor dog, for thee,
Had sermons or Divinity:
Thou’dst no delight in Scripture facts,
No joy in Gospels or in Acts:
Thou setted’st small store by such things,
As Apostolic journeyings.
Ah! Bandy, if the Apostle Paul
Had only been a cricket ball!
Queer little dog, I see thee yet,
Panting behind the cricket net:
Thy every fibre quivering
To touch that flying leathery thing,
That sometimes lives, sometimes is dead,
So wonderful and round and red!
Those wistful little yellow eyes
Glaring at balls that round them rise:
Those bandy legs, those big, broad paws,
Those smiling, comprehensive jaws:
That lolling, red, protruding tongue,
That plaintive yelp to heaven up-flung,
Attesting plain as human speech
How fain thou art the ball to reach.
Mid languid forms that lounge and sprawl,
And hardly deign to stop the ball,
A pattern fieldsman—sight to stir
The heart of every cricketer.
And down among the ghosts, who knows,
May flit dim forms of ghostly Pros;
(For such as throw on grass may well
Be doomed to bowl on Asphodel,
With Rhadamanthus standing there,
To see that every ball is fair.)
While ghosts of gentler birth strike at
A ghostly ball with ghostly bat.
If so, a little ghost has set
Himself behind that ghostly net,
And leaps into the air to clutch
The thing he loved on earth so much.
F. Bain.
Some of the allusions in the above will unfold their meaning in the later events of Bandy’s life. A more charming appreciation of a dog’s life has, I think, never been written, for Matthew Arnold’s lines on Geist’s Grave are conceived in a different vein.
On one occasion it seemed that Bandy must be absent from one of his beloved cricket matches. He was in hospital, suffering from what the veterinary surgeon said was eczema,—in an ordinary dog it might perhaps have been called mange—but in any case Bandy was hors de combat and in confinement. But Bandy throughout life had a well-grounded opinion that “stone walls do not a prison make,” and his master’s astonishment was great to see a dilapidated little figure strolling presently over the field to his accustomed place. His owner called out to the medical attendant to know what Bandy’s presence meant, and, to add to the quaintness of the incident, the reply came promptly in all good faith, “I don’t know, sir. I never told him there was a match on.”
When health and strength were his, Bandy showed himself a rigid disciplinarian. While a cricket match was in progress there were various minor games going on in different parts of the field. Bandy’s attention was of course given exclusively to the major court, until a criminal proceeding on the part of a fox-terrier attracted him. A big hit from one of the lesser players carried the ball near the terrier, and before the out-field could get up the dog seized the ball between his teeth and bolted with it. None of the spectators within reach stopped him, but Bandy, who had seen the theft from his proud position on the eleven bank, dashed to the rescue. With a growl of mingled astonishment and indignation he flew after the culprit, whom he soon reached and pinned by the throat. He then stood sentry over the disgorged ball till the fieldsman came up and recovered it. Then Bandy, still bristling with disgust, slowly returned to his master’s side.
Football and hockey matches Bandy seemed to attend more from a sense of duty, than from any interest he felt in the play itself. He did not watch the game but, satisfied that by his presence he had shown a becoming respect for the occasion, he turned his attention to more interesting matters. He generally spent the time in patrolling touch-lines cut in the turf, for here he had once found and killed a mouse. Though the joy never came to him again in the same way, he lived in hope of further discoveries.
For the Racquet Court he had a modified affection, but for some time he made a regular appearance there. It was the habit of one of the masters who had retired, but still lived near at hand, to come to the school every Monday and Friday morning at twelve o’clock, to play racquets with the school pair. When he left his garden he always found Bandy waiting to walk back with him to the court. Such a nice perception of times and seasons had Bandy that he was never known to make a mistake either in the day or hour of the visit. From the gallery no play was visible for one of Bandy’s size, but he would stand there the hour through, listening to the rattle of the balls he could not see, with every nerve on stretch. There was, too, always the chance of a “skied” ball, but the waiting was long, and from time to time he would give relief to his pent-up feelings by a yell of approval or despair.
One of the many ways in which Bandy showed his appreciation of his recognised position in the school life was by joining any party he thought worthy of his company when they were being photographed. His sense of loyalty to his house was shown in the selection he made, and outside any gathering of his house members, nothing below Common Room was good enough for him. But even then Bandy’s sense of justice did not allow him to enjoy any honour that was refused to his friends. When the masters were forming up on the Bowling Green to be photographed, some one of the party drew attention to the fact that Bandy was not present to complete their number. But it was the summer term, the hour between twelve and one, when Bandy was busy fielding. This he could not miss, and so it seemed that he had cut the photograph. But Bandy was equal to the occasion. Just as the last arrangements had been made, a movement was observed among the interested crowd that on these occasions surrounds the door at the head of the garden steps. A small form slipped through, and Bandy, still panting from his labours at the nets, dashed over the grass and took up the most conspicuous place in the group.
In accordance with custom, a second photograph was asked for, and while the photographer was making his preparations and regrouping his subjects, Bandy disappeared with the same speed that had characterised his advent. But this time the calls of friendship were in his mind, and when he returned he brought two curs of low degree to share his honours with him. But while Bandy was an honoured associate, it was felt that the dignity of Common Room would suffer if his friends were permitted to join the group. The curs were consequently chased away with ignominy, Bandy sitting up meanwhile and watching the treatment meted out to them. He seemed to be considering the situation, and at the moment the cap was taken off, he rose and moving rapidly down the line left a blur on the plate that testified to his feelings on the subject. He then walked off triumphantly to rejoin his rejected friends.
For the second time Bandy nearly met his death on the playing field. A harmless horse, whose business in life it was to pull rollers and mowing machines, spent his leisure hours in grazing at large in the field. Whether it was that his stolid demeanour, or the placid enjoyment that marked his performance, irritated Bandy, certain it is that from one of these or some other equally sound causes he gave the harmless quadruped no peace. His great delight was to dance about just out of range, with short, sharp, most aggravating barks. This he would keep up till the horse moved on, or if all else failed he would try a snap at his heels. Such outrageous conduct was very properly resented, and the day of reckoning came at last. With a thud that sounded far and wide, the victim caught his tormentor full on the head and fairly laid him out. Once more Bandy was carried home to die, and the horse had peace for one whole day.
The great problem of Bandy’s life was how to carry three Fives balls in his mouth at once. One cricket ball, two Fives balls, or three racquet balls he could manage, but his ambition was to stow away three Fives balls. Over the successful carrying out of this he would spend hours when no more enticing occupation offered itself. As it was a serious business, in the accomplishment of which he must not run the risk of interruption, he would establish himself with his balls in a certain grass plot in the court, which Bandy knew well was out of bounds for all but him. Here his master has often watched him, with the three balls laid out before him. He would begin by stowing away one ball in either cheek, but with all his efforts he could not get the third in between. Then he would eject them, and with the funniest air of careful thought, turn the matter over in his mind. Starting again, he would put the first ball well down his throat and make heroic efforts to accommodate the other two. A less conscientious dog might have substituted a smaller racquet ball for the third trophy, but such was not Bandy’s way, and, alas, death overtook him before he found a solution to the puzzle.
Fond, however, as Bandy was of balls and games, he put duty first. It is almost a creed of Marlborough faith that Bandy never missed a turn out of the School Rifle Corps after he had enrolled himself in that body. As soon as the “Fall in” was sounded he would appear on the scene, and, taking up his position just out of reach of the heels and sword of the Commanding Officer, would do his best to emphasize each word of command. Whether this was quite popular with the C.O.’s is perhaps open to doubt, but here, as in all other details of school life, Bandy was a privileged person. As the corps passed out of court to the cricket field, he remained in attendance on the captain in case his services should be required. It was a red-letter day for Bandy when such an occasion presented itself.
As Bandy lived before the time of the South African War, more attention was paid to the march past than is usual now. It was seldom that a march past was not included in the afternoon’s drill. Here Bandy was at his best. No sooner was the word given than he would dash forward to the head of the band, and take up his post about ten paces in front. His important duty was to lead, and with head and tail up, and eyes front, he did it with becoming attention to details. When the band wheeled left, to take post and play the corps by, Bandy would wheel right, and, stationing himself in dignified manner at the feet of the Captain, would take the salute with him.
Here again Bandy showed his stern ideas of discipline. It was before the days of putties, and short leather gaiters were worn by the volunteers. Mr. Swain, the bandmaster, was apt to be forgetful of details, and one day as the corps, headed by the band, was marching into the field, the captain, from halfway along the column, called the attention of a sergeant to the fact that the bandmaster was without the regulation gaiters. Bandy, who was in his usual place by the captain’s side, showed his sense of outraged propriety by springing to the head of the column and seizing Mr. Swain by the ankle, in the place where the gaiters should have been. Whether he was not pleased with the way in which his attentions were received, or did not consider the punishment equal to the offence, Bandy did not let the matter rest here.
The band practices, held in the gymnasium, were gatherings that did not appeal to Bandy, and he was never known to make one of them. But on the practice that followed his disciplinary effort on the parade ground, Bandy made his way to the gymnasium and demanded, and of course received, admission. Without a second’s hesitation he made straight for the astonished instructor, and repeated his warning against laxity. The sufferer suddenly developed an agility on the horizontal bars that no one had suspected him of possessing. The strangest thing perhaps about the incident was that it is the only case in which the dog ever attacked a human.
On the eve of one Field Day poor Bandy was in hospital. On the Monday afternoon he had a tumour removed from his throat, and the corps paraded early on Tuesday morning. One “turn out” then he was bound to miss. But the corps had just fallen in when, as the first word of command rang out, there was a gasp heard. The faithful soldier had managed to escape, and had just enough strength to crawl to his usual place. Is it wonder that such heroism was duly recorded in verse? “Exit Bandy” testifies to the place he held in the affections of his friends. These lines, like the others I have quoted, were written after the dog’s death.
EXIT BANDY
A truce to all your games to-day,
Put football, racquet-ball away,
Not now the hour for sport and play,
But sorrow sore instead.
A friend has vanished from our view
Whom all of our six hundred knew.
O sad Six Hundred when to you
The news came—“Bandy’s dead.”
Muffle your drums, O Volunteers;
Your shrill notes soften to our ears,
O Fifers; half a score of years
He never missed a drill,
But ever as your captain spoke
“Fall in,” a bark the courtyard woke
To tell to laggard human folk
Their dog was punctual still.
He loved us all—would favour none—
The world his playmate; in the sun
Or in the rain to romp and run
His sole, his whole delight;
Beneath his doleful brow was pent
Indomitable merriment,
To play with boy or man he meant
All day with all his might.
Was ever cricketer more keen
On our field, or on any seen?
Though summer’s labour made him lean
To him ’twas labour sweet;
You hit the ball, he watched its course,
And fast as any Manton horse
Outpaced it ere it spent its force
And laid it at your feet.
His voice would echo sharp and short
From top tier of the Racquet Court
As if he criticised the sort
Of stroke you made or missed;
So well he seemed to understand
The tricks of every round he scanned
You vowed him fit to take a hand
(Or little paw) at whist.
In Hockey, Football less he found
Of dog’s delight, though on the ground
He oft would watch with gaze profound
The fortunes of the game.
And, maybe, mused, “My legs for kicks
Were not devised or holding sticks,
Else in the fray what fun to mix!
This looking on is tame.”
Self-constituted sentinel
Our school domain he guarded well;
And woe to cur on whom he fell,
Though twice his weight and size.
Or, if too strong and big the brute,
For timely aid of stone or boot,
He begged us with petition mute,
As due from sworn allies.
A blithe life—free from pain or ache
Save when he made some quaint mistake;
Once heedless how a ball would break
It half beat out his brains.
And once a-hunting he would go,
And sliced by ploughshare ’neath the snow
Samaritans had work to sew
His outside in again.
Well, every dog must have his day,
Even you, whose gaiety made gay
Two generations, passed away
Ere ours, whom Marlborough bred:
And when was dog so mourned as you?
Half sighs, half smiles, the wide world through
Will blend in thousand-fold adieu
When news comes—“Bandy’s dead.”
A. H. Beesly.
Anything of the nature of a spectacle always had attractions for Bandy. Sunday was, as I have said, a dull time to him, for he was never allowed to follow his friends when they went into chapel. One day, when there was to be a confirmation in the school chapel, the sight of visitors and an unusual stir about the place attracted his attention. Soberly, as befitted the occasion, Bandy watched the crowd slowly pass into the chapel, and then retired to the Bradleian arches, to be ready for what might yet be in store. Scarcely had he settled down before there issued from the old house the Bishop and the Head Master, side by side, with crozier bearer in front. Bandy was instantly all attention. Was this a procession, within the meaning of the Act? Three was a small quorum, but then there were the robes. It was a procession, and with a yell of joy that to his master’s ears told only too well what was happening outside, he flew to take part in it. A series of short, sharp barks that sounded like pistol shots in the quiet stillness of the chapel made the watchers inside sharers of the scene that disturbed the serenity of the embarrassed dignitaries. But one of the sufferers was a Bishop, and Bandy’s master’s diocesan, so we will draw a veil over the sequel.
It was on a Sunday that yet another great disaster nearly ended Bandy’s life. To relieve the tedium of the dull hours he went off in the afternoon to do a little ratting on his own account. What followed can only be surmised, but that night Bandy did not return. The next morning a blood-stained track was found leading from a rick on Granham Hill, and on a harrow at the foot of the rick were blood and hair. Bandy must have leaped or fallen from the rick, though how he reached the top must ever be a mystery. That day two boys saw him making a desperate effort to reach home. He was in a terrible condition, and without assistance must have died before he could find his friends. The boys, however, did what they could for him. They took him to a friendly saddler, who washed his wounds and sewed him up, and again he was carried home apparently in extremis. Once more he was tenderly nursed back to life, and within forty-eight hours he crept from his master’s house to the school gates, where his owner found him waiting for him, too feeble to travel further.
Though Bandy was no fighter in the sense that he sought an encounter, he never refused a good offer. He returned sometimes from his little private excursions more than a trifle mauled, but he never made any fuss about his wounds. Rats were ever a joy to him, mice came in for a lesser share of his attentions, and he would spend hours in desperate efforts to dig out a rabbit. There was no mistaking the language with which he would resent any intervention, even from his best friends, at such times. On the other hand he was always ready to acknowledge a really well-timed service.
As the Downs round Marlborough abound in hares, they were ever an attraction to Bandy, and he lived in hope of some day accounting for one. He had a good nose, and would sometimes stick to a stale line till the hare jumped up within a few feet of him. Then away he would go again, always running by scent and not by view. When nearly beat he would sometimes start another hare. “Good,” he seemed to say, “I knew I was getting up to her,” and with desperate determination he would carry on the chase. His master was often obliged to ride up at last and call him off, “faint, yet pursuing.”
Bandy once had a rude shock. He had gone out with one of her late Majesty’s judges, to dig out a badger in the Pewsey Vale, some seven miles off. The holt was in a sand-pit, and had two entrances or pipes. A dog was sent up one of them to mark the badger, and behind the dog a man worked with a short pick, passing the sand out behind him. At the same time another man was told off to crawl up the other pipe and report progress. It was a pouring wet day, and just as Bandy’s master arrived on the scene the second man emerged backwards from his pipe. In a moment the judge’s coat was off, and in spite of all remonstrances he insisted on taking his turn, and slowly disappeared. The whole proceedings were a mystery to Bandy, and he watched attentively. No sooner did the judge reappear from the bowels of the earth than Bandy dashed in to solve the mystery for himself. His curiosity was quickly satisfied. Instead of a rabbit he found a badger at bay, and in this case he decided that discretion was the better part of valour.
It was only comparatively late in life that Bandy turned his thoughts seriously to education. Then for some time he attended his master’s lessons regularly, and never was there a more attentive pupil. When the blackboard was being used he would come out and sit in full view of it, and never take his eyes off till the chalk was laid down. For two terms he took up science, but he had the sense to limit his range of study, and only attended a class that was held twice a week. He never mistook the day and hour, and always made a point of escorting the master who was to give the lesson from his rooms to the laboratory.
Occupied as he was, Bandy yet found time for social duties. For some years he always paid one visit every term with unfailing precision. The master who was thus honoured was not conscious of any special claim to such distinction. He lived in rooms at the top of two flights of uncarpeted stairs, and regularly once a term he would hear what sounded like a human step coming slowly up, so self-repressed was Bandy when occasion required. Then would come a tap low down on the door, and in would walk the courteous visitor. The call would pass with no more incident than other visits of ceremony, and after a stroll round the room and a lounge before the fire Bandy would rise, make his bow, and walk downstairs with the same dignified restraint that had marked his approach.
It is as a public character that Bandy’s memory lives. The incidents of his private life were few. Though devoted to his master, and with a full sense of the claims of his house fellows upon his time and affections, he was not a demonstrative dog. The only times in which he was wont to display an exuberance of joy, was when his master returned home after the holidays. Then he would go nearly mad with joy, and testify to his delight with no thought for the restraining hand of decorum. If his master was laid aside by illness or accident, Bandy, who at other times did not frequent his bedroom, would always go up, and jumping on the bed, give the special mark of sympathy that the occasion demanded. But Bandy’s powers did not lie in the direction of sick-room nursing. His was only a visit of condolence. He was satisfied that others could look after his master better than he could, and he would go off to one of his many school duties, safe in the confidence that the invalid would be well cared for.
It seems almost sacrilege to speak of such a dog as Bandy being thrashed, but such ill luck has been the portion of other and greater lights of Marlborough, so I may take courage to say that twice such ignominy fell on Bandy. The first time his master felt called on to administer condign punishment was for the crime of chasing sheep on the Downs. The lesson was remembered, and the offence was never repeated.
On the second occasion Bandy resented the treatment meted out to him and took his means of retaliation. It was a prize day, and he wished to share in the unwonted stir and movement that promised untold joys. But his master decided otherwise, and sent him sternly home. From the order there was no appeal. Sadly Bandy turned from promised joys, and meditated vengeance in his heart. Going straight back to the dining room he forthwith jumped on the table, and finding there among other dainties a cold duck, he determined to relieve the tedium of his banishment by a feast. So he devoured the duck in comfort on the floor, and then waited on the doorstep for his master’s return. When the latter came in Bandy led the way to the dining room, and conducted his master to the remains of his repast. It was not to be supposed that a free member of the school could be shut out from one of its great functions with impunity.
Bandy was always keenly sensitive to ridicule. It was a favourite amusement of his to watch the matron dispense the various medicines to the boys. Curled up in her chair, he would follow the proceedings with interest. One of the boys in teasing mood came and stood in front of him, and laughed derisively. Bandy showed his sense of the insult offered him by immediately leaving the room and taking refuge in his master’s study. Two years later this boy came down to see the senior master, and as soon as Bandy heard his step outside he made good his escape from the room. As soon as the boy entered, his master knew the cause of Bandy’s hurried departure.
Once again Bandy was in hospital, and the very care his friends took of him proved his undoing. No one had mastered the secret of his former escapes from confinement, and to make all sure, Bandy was chained up and left for the night. Alas, the next morning, which by a strange coincidence was his master’s birthday, a sad sight met the eyes of his guardians. Bandy, unable to support the indignity of loss of liberty, had strangled himself in mad efforts to escape. There lay his little lifeless form, and grief reigned in Marlborough for the loss of the good comrade and faithful friend, who for ten long years had been a privileged member of the school body.
Yet another friend was moved to verse in his sorrow for his loss.
BANDY
Bandy dead, and such a death!
Sure it makes the heart beat faster,
That he rather strove to die
Than be parted from his master.
Countless risks to limb and life
(As I write my spirits falter)
He had weathered; and the end—
Self-destruction with a halter!
Bandy! When from lip to lip
Spread that dismal bit of knowledge,
More than grief for loss of brute
Dimmed the gladness of the college.
How shall we supply the place
Vacant by his sad disaster?
Self-appointed, Bandy long
Held the post of Extra Master.
See him watch behind the nets,
Cerberus-toothed, and Lynceus-sighted;
See him scampering o’er the grass,
Coach and fag in one united.
See him, close inspection o’er,
Column formed, and bugles blowing,
Head the Corps, and through the gates
Trot, the way to glory showing.
In the field, the court, the road,
Barking, bossing had you seen him,
Nil humani, you had said,
Was to Bandy alienum.
Never, rare in man! de trop,
Ever on occasion handy;
Boys and Masters courage take
From the energy of Bandy!
More than brute, if less than man,
Far beyond all canine measure,
Sharing, conscious of his worth,
Human business and pleasure.
Mystery strange of brutish soul!
Beamed from out those doggy features;
More of sympathy for man
Than his nearer fellow creatures.
Lived throughout that grizzly frame
Iron purpose past our guiding;
Wisdom hoar that mocked our search
Deep in those weird eyes abiding.
Where is Bandy’s spirit fled?
What forbids this hope to cherish,
Wit so keen, and love so strong,
Are not of the things that perish?
X. A. M.