THE SAME, CHANTECLER, _later_ THE PIGEONS, _and_
THE SWAN.
THE MAGPIE
[_After looking_ CHANTECLER _up and down, disdainfully._] The Cock!
CHANTECLER
[_From the threshold, to the_ GUINEA-HEN.] Your pardon Madam,--my humble
duty!--for venturing to present myself in this plumage--
THE GUINEA-HEN
Come in, I pray!
CHANTECLER
I hardly know whether I should. I have a limited number of toes--
THE GUINEA-HEN
[_Indulgently._] Oh, never mind!
CHANTECLER
I cannot claim to be a Carpathian, and--I hardly know how to conceal it
from you--I have feet!
THE GUINEA-HEN
Oh, let not that distress you!
CHANTECLER
A plain red-pepper comb, an ordinary garlic clove ear--
THE GUINEA-HEN
Of course, of course, we will excuse you. You came in your business
suit!
CHANTECLER
Nay, my best! Pardon if my best combines merely the green of all April
with the gold of all October! I stand abashed. I am the Cock, just the
Cock, without further addition. The Cock such as he is still found in
some old-fashioned barnyard. A Cock shaped like a Cock, whose outline
persists in the vane on the steeple-top in the artist’s eye, and the
humble toy which a child’s hand finds among shavings in a little
wooden box.
AN IRONICAL VOICE
[_From among the group of gorgeous prodigies._] The Gallic Cock, in
short?
CHANTECLER
[_Gently, without even turning._] Sure as I am of my aboriginal claim to
this soil, I make no point of assuming the name. But, now you mention
it, I recognise that when one simply says the Cock, that is the Cock
he means!
THE BLACKBIRD
[_Low to_ CHANTECLER.] I have seen your adversary!
CHANTECLER
[_Catching sight of the_ PHEASANT-HEN _approaching._] Be still! She must
know nothing of this!
THE PHEASANT-HEN
[_Coquettishly._] Did you come for the sake of seeing me?
CHANTECLER
[_Bowing._] I am weak, you remember!
THE GUINEA-HEN
[_Listening to the_ COCHIN-CHINA COCK, _who is talking in an undertone,
thickly surrounded by_ HENS.] That Cock from Cochin China is
simply awful!
CHANTECLER
[_Turning._] Enough!
THE HENS
[_Around the_ COCHIN COCK, _giving little scandalised cries._] Oh!--
THE GUINEA-HEN
[_Tickled._] Oh, you naughty bird!--He is quite the most improper of our
gallinacea!
CHANTECLER
[_Louder._] Enough!
THE COCHIN-CHINA COCK
[_Stops, and with mocking surprise._] Is it the Gallic Cock objecting?
CHANTECLER
I am not Gallic if you give the word a base or ridiculous meaning. By
Jove! Every Hen here knows whether my trumpet blast belongs to a
soprano! But your perverse attempts to wring blushes from little
baggages in convenient corners outrage my love of Love! It is true that
I care more to retain love’s dream than these Cochin-Chinese, who,
courting a giggle, use refinement in coarseness, research in vulgarity;
true that my blood has swifter flow in a less ponderous body, and that I
am not a feathered pig,--but a Cock!
THE PHEASANT-HEN
Come, come away to the woods,--I love you!
CHANTECLER
[_Looking around him._] Oh, to see a real being appear! Someone simple,
someone--
THE MAGPIE
[_Announcing._] Two Pigeons!
CHANTECLER
[_Drawing a breath of relief._] At last,--pigeons! [_He runs eagerly to
the entrance._]
THE PIGEONS
[_Entering with a series of somersaults._] Hop!
CHANTECLER
[_Falling back in amazement._] What is this?
THE PIGEONS
[_Introducing themselves between two springs._] The Tumblers! English
Clowns!
CHANTECLER
Where am I?
THE GUINEA-HEN
[_Running after the_ TUMBLERS _who disappear among the throng of
guests._] Hop! Hop!
CHANTECLER
Pigeons turning acrobats!--Oh, the joy of seeing something true,
something unblemished--
THE MAGPIE
[_Announcing._] The Swan!
CHANTECLER
[_Coming forward delighted._] Good! A Swan! [_Shrinking away._] He is
black!
THE BLACK SWAN
[_With swaggering satisfaction._] I have discarded the whiteness while
preserving the outline!
CHANTECLER
The real Swan’s shadow does no less! [_Thrusting the_ SWAN _aside to hop
up on a bench whence, through a gap in the hedge, he can see the distant
meadows._] Let me climb up on this bench. I need to make sure that
Nature still exists--though so far away! Ah, yes! The grass is green, a
cow is grazing, a calf sucking--And Heaven be praised, the calf has a
single head! [_Coming down again beside the_ PHEASANT-HEN.]
THE PHEASANT-HEN
Oh, come away to the innocent woods, sincere and dewy, where we will
love each other!
THE BLACKBIRD
[_Pointing at_ CHANTECLER _and the_ PHEASANT-HEN, _who are standing
close and talking low._] We are getting on!
THE GUINEA-HEN
[_Intensely interested._] Do you think so? [_She spreads her wings to
screen them._] Oh, I am so fond of helping along a clandestine
love affair!
THE BLACKBIRD
[_Sticking his bill under the_ GUINEA-HEN’S _wing so as to keep the pair
in sight._] I believe she has thoughts of annexing his comb.
THE PHEASANT-HEN
[_To_ CHANTECLER.] Come, dearest, come away!
CHANTECLER
[_Resisting._] No, I must sing where Destiny placed me. I am useful
here, I am beloved--
THE PHEASANT-HEN
[_Remembering what she overheard the night before in the farmyard._] Are
you so sure?--Come away to the woods, where we shall hear real pigeons
cooing tenderly to each other!
THE TURKEY
[_At the back._] Ladies, the great Peacock--
THE PEACOCK
[_Modestly._] The Super-peacock--who supervenes, and supersedes--
THE GUINEA-HEN
Will spread his tail for us! He has expressed his amiable willingness so
far to favour us.
[_The company falls into groups of spectators, the outlandish_ COCKS
_forming a wreath around their patron._]
THE PEACOCK
[_Preparing to spread his tail._] I am, by precious natural gift, in
addition to my multifarious accomplishments something of a--shall I say
artist in firework?
THE GUINEA-HEN
[_Effervescently._] Yes!
THE PEACOCK
No. Pyrotechnist. For the choicest piece in urban gardens, where
Catharine-wheels on festival nights spurt sidereal spray, and rockets
shot into gold-riddled skies fall back in prismatic showers, is less
sapphirine, smaragdine, cuprine--
CHANTECLER
Zounds!
THE PEACOCK
--than, I venture to say, ladies, am I--
THE PHEASANT-HEN
Oh, I understood that last word!
THE PEACOCK
--when I unfurl the union of fan, jewel-case, and screen, upon which I
offer to the self-same sunbeams that redden the reed all the joyous gems
you now may contemplate!
CHANTECLER
What a silly bill!
[_The_ PEACOCK _has spread his tail._]
A COCK
[_To the_ PEACOCK.] Master, which of us will you make the fashion?
THE PADUA COCK
[_Quickly coming forward._] Me! I look like a palm-tree!
A CHINA COCK
[_Pushing the_ PADUA COCK _aside._] I look like a pagoda!
A BIG FEATHER-FOOTED COCK
[_Pushing the_ CHINA COCK _aside._] Me! I have cauliflowers sprouting at
my heels!
CHANTECLER
Each is in one the show and Mr. Barnum!
ALL
[_Parading and filing past the_ PEACOCK.] See my beak! See my feet! See
my feathers!
CHANTECLER
[_Suddenly shouting at them._] Lo! While you hold your costume contest,
a Scarecrow gives you his blessing!
[_Behind them, in fact, the wind has lifted the arms of the_ SCARECROW,
_which loosely wave above the pageant._]
ALL
[_Starting back._] What?
CHANTECLER
Behold this dummy talking to that lay-figure! [_While the wind blows
through the flapping rags._] What say the trousers, dancing their limp
fandango? They say, “We were once the fashion!” And, terror of the
titlark, what says the old hat which a beggar would none of? “I was the
fashion!” And the coat? “I was the fashion!” And the tattered sleeves,
that no one has care to mend, try to clasp the Wind, whom they take for
the Fashion, and drop back empty--The Wind has passed, the Wind is far!
THE PEACOCK
[_To the animals slightly dismayed by this address._] You poor-spirited
creatures, that thing cannot talk!
CHANTECLER
Man says the same of us.
THE PEACOCK
[_To the birds nearest to him._] He is vexed because of those Cocks whom
I introduced. [_To_ CHANTECLER, _ironically._] What, my dear sir, do you
say to these resplendent gentlemen?
CHANTECLER
I say, my dear sir, that these resplendent gentlemen are manufactured
wares, the work of merchants with highly complex brains, who to fashion
a ridiculous Chicken have taken a wing from that one, a topknot from
this. I say that in such Cocks nothing remains of the true Cock. They
are Cocks of shreds and patches, idle bric-a-brac, fit to figure in a
catalogue, not in a barnyard with its decent dunghill and its dog. I say
that those befrizzled, beruffled, bedeviled Cocks were never stroked and
cherished by Nature’s maternal hand. I say that it’s all Aviculture, and
Aviculture is flapdoodle! And I say that those preposterous parrots,
without style, without beauty, without form, whose bodies have not even
kept the pleasing oval of the egg they were hatched from, look like so
many desperate fowls escaped from some hen-coop of the Apocalypse!
A COCK
My dear sir--
CHANTECLER
[_With rising spirit._] And I add that the whole duty of a Cock is to be
an embodied crimson cry! And when a Cock is not that, it matters little
that his comb be shaped like a toadstool, or his quills twisted like a
screw, he will soon vanish and be heard of no more, having been nothing
but a variety of a variety!
A COCK
I protest--
CHANTECLER
[_Going from one to the other._] Yes, Cocks affecting incongruous forms,
Cocks crowned with cocoa-palm coiffures--Hear me talk like the Peacock!
I lapse into alliteration! [_Finding his fun in bewildering them with
cackling guttural volubility._] Yes, Cockerels cockaded with cockles,
Cockatrice-headed Cockasters, cock-eyed Cockatoos! Not content to be
common Cocks, your crotchet it was to be what but crack Cocks? Yes,
Fashion, to be accounted of thy flock, these chuckle-headed Cocks craved
to be Super-cocks. But know ye not, ye crazy Cocks, one cannot be so
queer a Cock, but there may occur a queerer Cock? Let some Cock come
whose coccyx boasts a more flamboyant shock, and you pass like childish
measles, croup or chicken-pox! Consider that to-morrow, high
Cockalorums, fancy Cocks, consider that day after to-morrow,
cheese-capped goblet-crested Cocks, in spite of curly hackle and
cauliflowered hocks, a more fantastic Cock than ever may creep out of
a--box! For the Cock-fancier, to diversify his stock, may more
fantastically still combine his Cutcutdaycuts and his Cocks, and you
will be no more--sad Cuckoos made a mock!--but old rococo Cocks beside
this more coquettish Cock!
A COCK
And how, may one learn from you, can a Cock secure himself against
becoming rococo?
CHANTECLER
One royal way there is: to think only of crowing like a right and proper
Cock!
A COCK
[_Haughtily._] We are well known, I beg to state, for our exceptionally
fine crowing!
CHANTECLER
Known to whom?