Scene FOURTH

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 ridicu- lous 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. [Announcmg.] 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![Shrink- ing 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 tench 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 fair 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 out- landish COCKS forming a wreath around their patron]

THE PEACOCK. [Preparing to spread his tail.] I am, by precious nat- ural gift, in addition to my multifarious accomplishments, something of a — shall I say artist in firework?

THE GUINEA-HEN. [Efferoescently] 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, smarag- dine, 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 palmtree!

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, cockeyed 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 com- bine 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?