Love and Loyalty Theme Analysis

He brought in some sweet hay and a deep bucket of cool water. I do not believe he stopped talking the whole time. As he turned to go out of the stable, I called out to him to thank him and he seemed to understand for he smiled broadly and stroked my nose. “We’ll get along, you and I,” he said kindly.

“You should never talk to horses, Albert,” said his mother from outside. “They don’t understand you. They’re stupid creatures. Obstinate and stupid, that’s what your father says, and he’s known horses all his life.”

“Father just doesn’t understand them,” said Albert. “I think he’s frightened of them.”

I went over to the door and watched Albert and his mother walking away into the darkness. I knew then that I had found a friend for life, that there was an instinctive and immediate bond of trust and affection between us.

“Father,” said Albert with resolution in his voice, “I’ll train Joey—I’ll train him to plow all right—but you must promise never to raise a whip to him again. He can’t be handled that way. I know him, Father, I know him as if he were my own brother.”

“You train him, Albert, you handle him. Don’t care how you do it. I don’t want to know,” said his father dismissively. “I’ll never go near the brute again. I’d shoot him first.”

But when Albert came into the stable, it was not to soothe me as he usually did nor to talk to me gently. Instead he walked up to me and looked me hard in the eye. “That was plain stupid,” he said sternly. “If you want to survive, Joey, you’ll have to learn.”

“You don’t drink, Mother,” Albert replied vehemently. “And you’ve got worries just like he has and, anyway, if you did drink, you wouldn’t yell at me like he does. I do all the work I can, and more, and still he never stops complaining that this isn’t done and that isn’t done. He complains every time I take Joey out in the evening. He doesn’t even want me to go off bell-ringing once a week. It’s not reasonable, Mother.”

“I know that, Albert,” his mother said more gently now, taking both his hands in hers. “But you must try to see the good in him. He’s a good man—he really is. You remember him that way, too, don’t you?”

“Yes, Mother. I remember him like that,” Albert acknowledged, “but […] Joey works for his living now and he has to have time off to enjoy himself, just like I do.”

He must have known that I would follow old Zoey because he roped me up to her saddle and led us both quietly out of the yard down the path and over the bridge. Once in the road, he mounted Zoey swiftly and we trotted up the hill and into the village. He never spoke a word to either of us. I knew the road well enough, of course, for I had been there often enough with Albert, and indeed I loved going there because there were always other horses to meet and people to see. It was in the village only a short time before that I had met my first motorcar outside the post office and had stiffened with fear as it rattled past, but I had stood steadily, and I remember that Albert had made a big fuss over me after that.

But it was my rider that I disliked more than anything in my new life. Corporal Samuel Perkins was a hard, gritty little man, an ex-jockey whose only pleasure in life seemed to be the power he could exert over a horse. He was universally feared by all troopers and horses alike. Even the officers, I felt, went in trepidation of him, for it seemed he knew all there was to know about horses and had the experience of a lifetime behind him. And he rode hard and heavy-handedly. With him, the whip and the spurs were not just for show.

He would never beat me or lose his temper with me; indeed, sometimes when he was grooming me I think he quite liked me, and I certainly felt for him a degree of respect, but this was based on fear and not on love.

“Let’s say, I feel he has a mind of his own. Yes, let’s put it that way. He’s good enough out on maneuvers—a real stayer, one of the very best—but inside the school, sir, he’s a devil, and a strong devil, too. Never been properly schooled, sir, you can tell that. He’s a farm horse, he is, and farm-trained. If he’s to be cavalry horse, sir, he’ll have to learn to accept the disciplines. He has to learn to obey instantly and instinctively. You don’t want a prima donna under you when the bullets start flying.”

“[…] I asked you to train Joey because I think you’re the best man for the job. But perhaps you should ease up on him just a bit. […] He’s a willing soul—he just needs a bit of gentle persuasion, that’s all. But keep it gentle, Corporal, keep it gentle.”

Albert suddenly dropped my tail and moved slowly around me running his hand along my back. Then at last we stood facing each other. There was a rougher hue to his face, I thought; he had more lines around his eyes and was a broader, bigger man in his uniform than I remembered him. But he was my Albert, and there was no doubt about it […].

“Joey?” he said, tentatively, looking into my eyes. “Joey?” I tossed up my head and called out to him in my happiness, so that the sound echoed around the yard […]. Then he turned and walked away to the gateway before facing me, cupping his hands to his lips and whistling. It was his own whistle, the same low, stuttering whistle he had used to call me [before].

Major Martin cleaned my wound and stitched it up, and although at first I could still put little weight on it, I felt in myself stronger with every day that passed. Albert was with me again, and that in itself was medicine enough; but properly fed once more with warm mash each morning and a never-ending supply of sweet-scented hay, my recovery seemed only a matter of time. Albert, like the other veterinary orderlies, had many other horses to care for, but he would spend every spare minute he could find fussing over me in the stable […].

But time passed and I did not get better.

That’s what they said it was—one stray shell out of nowhere and he’s gone. I will miss him, Joey. We’ll both miss him, won’t we? […] You know what he was, Joey, before the war? He had a fruit cart in London, outside Covent Garden. Thought the world of you, Joey. Told me often enough. And he looked after me, Joey. Like a brother he was to me. Twenty years old. He had his whole life ahead of him. All wasted now, ’cause of one stray shell. He always told me, Joey. He’d say, ‘At least if I go, there’ll be no one that’ll miss me. Only my cart—and I can’t take that with me, and that’s a pity.’ He was proud of his cart, showed me a photo of himself standing by it.

You do not understand at all. I will sell you this horse for one English penny, and for a solemn promise—that you will always love this horse as much as my Emilie did and that you will care for him until the end of his days. And more than this, I want you to tell everyone about my Emilie and about how she looked after your Joey and the big black horse when they came to live with us. You see, my friend, I want my Emilie to live on in people’s hearts. I shall die soon, in a few years, no more, and then no one will remember my Emilie as she was […]. I want you to tell your friends at home about my Emilie […]. That way she will live forever, and that is what I want. Is it a bargain between us?