Free Innocent Birds by T. F. Powys Page A

reserve of energy in the background ready for use when required. To any ordinary person that he met, or served drink to, he appeared as simple and commonplace as any other innkeeper who prefers a pretty barmaid to a plain one.
    Mr. Bugby’s horse was a young mare, though a very quiet one. And when she turned into the Madder lane and suddenly stopped dead, Mr. Bugby naturally wished to know the reason. The reason was an ash tree, now bare of leaves, that grew in the bank just inside the Madder lane. This tree had bare arms, with twigs on the ends like claws. These arms reached out over the road in a nasty way, as though they wanted to catch hold of some one.
    Mr. Bugby viewed the horse’s behaviour with displeasure, and the trees with interest. That something else beside himself was able to bring the terror of the unseen even into a horse’s mind, interested him.
    Lily had crouched upon the pavement, just like his mare, when she had seen him drive by. Had he been walking he would have taken away her hands and made her look at him, if only forthe pleasure of reminding himself how she had looked once in the bar parlour.
    ‘Pain‚’ thought Mr. Bugby, following the reasoning culled from that adventure, ‘conquers fear.’ Were he that ash tree and the horse a maid, if he could lay hold of her and hurt her, she would soon begin to move a little though she were crying. Mr. Bugby nodded in a friendly way at the tree, as though to encourage it in the kindly act of driving away the fear of the horse by giving it pain. As the tree did nothing, and the mare still refused to move, Mr. Bugby felt the inevitable necessity of acting the man in the tree.
    In order to do so, in a manner he thought the most proper, he got down from the cart, and picked up a strong stump of ash that had been blown from the tree.
    With this weapon—for his whip he had considered too slender, and besides, he wished the tree to do it—he began to beat the horse about the head and eyes.
    If the fear had been great, Mr. Bugby wisely decided that in order to defeat it the pain must be greater.
    Having reached to blood, and bethinking himself that all policemen were not as friendly as that smiling one, and that a country officer might, having more knowledge of animals, be less able to believe Mr. Bugby’s excuse that the horse had been standing upon its head and so had got scratched, he stopped his blows.
    Stepping into the trap again, Mr. Bugby drove on as though no tree was there; for the horse passed it as if its eyes, so blinded by blows, were quite incapable of seeing anything at all, which was indeed true.
    Mr. Bugby trotted his horse pleasantly down the Madder lane and turned into the inn yard.
    All was silent there, as became the inn’s name, except the sign-board; and that creaked mournfully to and fro, blown by the autumn wind, as though it called the attention of any passer-by to the deserted state of the bar parlour, and the sad emptiness of the pewter mugs, hung in a row and covered with cobwebs. The garden was sad and deserted too, but covered with weeds instead of cobwebs, over which a hawk hovered, waiting for the little birds, in the same amiable manner as the spiders waited in their webs for the little flies.
    In the backyard of ‘The Silent Woman’ there were scattered about broken bottles and old tins, that said, as plainly as any rubbish could, that the place had had no human attention for a long while. Mr. Bugby tied his mare to a post, on which was an iron ring intended for this purpose. He then looked into the garden, hoping to notice something there that he wished to see. But the bindweed covering all so effectually, Mr. Bugby turned back into the yard, and the hawk flew away, evidently regarding the innkeeper, though quite wrongfully, as an enemy.
    In the yard Mr. Bugby kicked a jam-pot to pieces, because he thought that it got in his way onpurpose, and then looked about for the person that the agent had told him had charge of the