Having thus sealed my fate, he turned upon his heel and went his way. The cold, selfish sentence of Mr. Archibald Graham was carried out. I will make no comment upon the character of this young man, but leave my readers to judge his conduct for themselves. A few hours later I left him and Maythorn Lodge behind me.
Hoskins took me down to Smithfield, where he sold me to the proprietor of an advertising van; and for four months I dragged behind me a huge unsightly structure of light boarding, whereon was pasted the advertisements my master was employed to make known.
Sometimes we puffed a patent pill, warranted to cure every form of suffering known to man; at another time we vaunted the merits of some low wretched comic singer, who did his best nightly to degrade already fallen man; and then this gave way to a wholesale outfitter’s declaration that he was the best of tailors; and so we went on, until an Act of Parliament swept advertising vans from the public streets, and my master’s trade was ruined.
This was a very wretched time for me: I was badly stabled, badly fed; I was never once decently groomed all the time I was with this man. Sometimes, it is true, he scratched my back with a bit of a curry-comb, and threw a pail or two of water over my legs; but this was all, and what with the life I led, and the wet weather and the dirt of the streets, I sank down very low and became a poor wretched object indeed.
I was sold again for so small a sum that I will not name it—none who knew poor Blossom in his earliest days would have dreamt that he could have come to such a pass. This buyer was Mr. Crabbe, livery stable keeper and cab proprietor of Hackney Marsh—the last master I shall ever know.
He kept about a dozen horses—eight of them young and in good condition; the rest were pitiable objects like myself, and we were reserved for night work.
I need not tell you that our position in the stable was anything but an enviable one. The young horses turned up their noses at us, and upon the strength of being better fed and better cared for than our wretched selves, treated us with the greatest possible contempt. Mr. Crabbe himself seemed to have no thought or care for us, and never once, from the hour I became his property to the present moment, did he ever bestow a kind word or a caress upon me.
As for my duty—my work as night cab horse—I will speak more of that presently; but just now I must tell of an incident which occurred in the stable, as it bears upon the fate of a friend who is very dear to me—I mean Rip, the noble, handsome Rip.
One day, late in the afternoon, Mr. Crabbe brought home a new horse, a young thing about four years of age, which he put in the stall next to mine. I just glanced at him, but made no attempt to open a conversation, as I had endured so many insults and snubbings from the better horses of our stable; and after a time forgetting him, fell into a musing mood. My fancy carried me back, as it often did, to my place of birth, and the paddock and the surrounding scene rose up before me. For a moment the quietude of the sweet place was upon me, and bowing my head I murmured, ‘Oh, Upton, Upton! would that I could take these old bones down to your green fields! Would that I could lie down beside your sweet river and give up my life!’
‘Who talks of Upton?’ said a voice near me; and turning my head I saw the stranger look at me with an inquisitive face.