Black Beauty

meals; he puts them in a drawer.’ So John
kindly held the boy down on his back, and forced the food down his throat.
    ‘Now,’ he said, ‘if Beauty
gets better, all is well, but otherwise I will say, “you bastard, you killed
Nigger.” ‘Well, John! Thank you. I knew you did not wish to be too hard, and I
am glad you see it was only ignorance.’
    ‘If people can say, “Oh! I
did not know, I did not mean any harm,” I suppose Martha Mulwash did not mean
to kill that baby when she dosed it with Dalby, but she did kill it, and was
tried for manslaughter. Horse slaughter is worse still,’ said John. ‘Aye Tom,
two weeks ago, when those young ladies left your hothouse door open, with a
frosty east wind blowing right in, you said it killed your crop of hothouse
plants.’
    ‘Aye, there isn’t a banana
that hasn’t got frost bite. Worst of it is, I don’t know where to go to get
fresh ones. I was nearly mad.’
    I heard no more, for the
medicine did well and sent me to sleep, and in the morning I felt much better;
but I often thought of John’s words when I came to know more of the world.

20

JOE GREEN
     
    Oh, terrible sight, a cart stuck in ruts
    And the driver lashing the horses, giving them cuts
    ‘Stop that,’ said a lady with a bad cough
    Whereupon the cruel driver said, ‘Fuck off’
    John, my groom, said, ‘Stop, stop that’
    But the driver knocked him flat
    Nobody could stop the evil driver
    Then somebody killed him with a screwdriver
    The carter was buried at Hackney Wick
    And they did it very quick.
     
    Joe Green went on very
well; he learned quickly. He ate all the food he had been keeping in the
drawer, and was then violently sick.
    It so happened, one morning
John was out with Justice in the luggage cart, and the master wanted a note to
be taken immediately to a gentleman’s house, about three miles distant. He sent
orders for Joe to saddle me and take it; adding the caution that he was to ride
carefully.
    The note was delivered, and
we were returning quietly, till we came to the brick field. Here, we saw a cart
heavily laden with bricks. The wheels had stuck fast in the stiff mud of some
deep ruts, and the carter was shouting and flogging the two horses
unmercifully. Joe pulled up. It was a sad sight. There were the two horses,
straining and struggling with all their might to drag the cart out, but they
could not move it; the sweat streamed from their legs and flanks, their sides
heaved, and every muscle was strained — some had a prolapse — whilst the man,
fiercely pulling at the head of the fore horse, swore and lashed most brutally.
    ‘Hold hard,’ said Joe,
‘don’t go on flogging the horses like that; the wheels are so stuck that they
cannot move the cart.’
    ‘Fuck off,’ said the
carter, taking no heed. He went on lashing.
    ‘Stop! Pray stop,’ said
Joe. ‘I’ll help you to lighten the cart.’
    ‘Mind your own business,
you impudent little bastard,’ and the next moment, we were going at a round
gallop towards the house of the master brickmaker.
    The house stood close by
the roadside. Joe knocked at the door. The door was opened, and Mr Clay himself
came out.
    ‘Hulloa! Young man!’
    ‘Mr Clay, there’s a fellow
in your brickyard flogging two horses to death. I told him to stop and he said
“Fuck off.’ I have come to tell you; pray, sir, go.’
    ‘Thank ye, my lad,’ said
the man, running in for his hat. Then, pausing for a moment, ‘Will you give
evidence of what you saw if I should bring the fellow up before a magistrate?’
    ‘That I will,’ said Joe,
but the man was gone, and we were on our way home at a smart trot.
    ‘Why, what’s the matter
with you, Joe? You look angry all over,’ said John, as the boy flung himself
from the saddle and fell into the water trough.
    ‘I am angry all over.’
    ‘And wet as well,’ said
John.
    Our master, being one of
the county magistrates, often had cases brought to him to settle, or to say
what should be done. It was the men’s dinner hour, but when Joe next came into
the stable, he gave me a good-natured slap and said, ‘We won’t see such things
done, will we, old fellow?’ We heard afterwards that, because he had given his
evidence so clearly, and because the horses were in such an exhausted state
(they were in hospital on a drip, bearing the marks of such brutal usage), the
carter was sentenced to be thrown from Beachy Head for three months.

21

THE PARTING
     
    Everyone came to say