 |
SCOPS He is sure to say things which they are equally sure to take up.
THE GRAND-DUKE [Thrilled.] And do you believe that a cock-fight—?
SCOPS Such is my fond hope.
THE CAT But listen, Scops. Suppose Chantecler should win?
SCOPS Know, Angora, that there will be among those fancy cocks a genuine game-cock, lean, with tawny wing, the same who—
THE BLACKBIRD [Seeing the OWLS puff out their feathers for joy.] Sensation among the audience!
SCOPS The same who has defeated the most famous champions—the White Pile. And as this victor in Flemish and English encounters wears at his heels, for the defter dispatching of his enemy, two razors fastened there by the ingenuity of man, by tomorrow night Chantecler will be dead, and his eyes picked out of their sockets.
THE SCREECH-OWL [Enthusiastically.] We will go and gloat over his corpse!
THE GRAND-DUKE [Risen to his full height, formidable.] And his comb, which looked above his forehead like an incarnate bit of scarlet dawn, we will take his comb,—our dearest dream at length fulfilled!—and we will eat it!
ALL [With a yell, which ends in their ferocious cackling and rocking.] And we will eat it,—eat it, ha, ha!
THE GRAND-DUKE [Spreading his wings.] Hush! [Dead silence.]
SCOPS And after that—
THE BLACKBIRD [Hopping.] It's quite a tidy proposition as it stands—
SCOPS What?
THE BLACKBIRD Your scheme! By Jingo, if I were the sort of bird to take things solemnly, I would go straight to the Cock and tell him. But I will do nothing of the sort. [He concludes, with four little hops.] For I know—that all this—will turn out—beautifully!
SCOPS [Ironically.] Beautifully indeed! [He continues in growing excitement.] And after that, if those absurd Cocks of far-fetched breeds have not by to-morrow evening gone back to their cages, we will eat them all, no longer good for anything!
THE GRAND-DUKE [In his neighbour's ear.] And after that we will eat the Blackbird for dessert.
THE BLACKBIRD [Who has not caught the last sentence.] What did he say?
SCOPS [Quickly.] Nothing! [In a still increasing frenzy of glee.] And after that—
[In the distance: Cock-a-doodle-doo! Instant silence. SCOPS stops short and collapses, as if mown down. All the puffed OWLS appear suddenly to have grown thin.]
ALL [Looking at one another and blinking.] What is it? What was that? [They hastily spread their wings and call to one another for flight.] Grand-Duke! Minor! Minimus!
THE BLACKBIRD [Hopping from one to the other.] Going? So soon? Why, what's your hurry?
VOICE [Of one of the NIGHT-BIRDS calling to another.] Nyctalis!
THE BLACKBIRD It's hours before daybreak. Oceans of time, you have!
AN OWL Asio, are you coming?
ANOTHER OWL [Calling.] Nictea!
ANOTHER [Fluttering up to him.] Yes, my dear! [They all stagger and trip over their wings.]
THE BLACKBIRD What makes them stumble?
THE NIGHT-BIRDS [Winking and blinking with marked evidences of pain.] Oh, how it hurts! Ow! Ow!
THE BLACKBIRD Lightning opthalmia, I declare! [One by one the OWLS fly off.]
THE GRAND-DUKE [The last to go, spins on himself with a cry of pain and rage.] How does he contrive, that pernicious Cock, to have a voice that fairly puts out your eyes! [He heavily flaps off.]
VOICES OF THE NIGHT-BIRDS [In the distance.] Strix!
THE BLACKBIRD [Looking after them among the branches, and later in the blue space over the valley.] They are calling one another!
VOICE IN THE DISTANCE Scops!
THE BLACKBIRD [Bending over the valley, where the dark wings are dwindling and fading.] They wheel—waver—dip—
VOICES [Dying in the distance.] Owl of the Wall! Of the Belfry! Of the Yew!
THE BLACKBIRD Gone! [He looks about, gives a hop, and with an immediate return to levity.] But it's supper-time.—Now for a bite of cold grasshopper! [The PHEASANT-HEN suddenly flies over the brushwood tangle, dropping beside him.] You!
SCENE SECOND
THE BLACKBIRD, THE PHEASANT-HEN, later CHANTECLER
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Panting, tragically earnest.] I ran all the way.—You were there.—Oh, I am half dead with terror!—Well you must have overheard their dreadful secret! You, his friend!
THE BLACKBIRD [Cheerfully rummaging among the moss.] Or the thigh of a katydid will do.
THE PHEASANT-HEN I was watching from a distance. I crouched in a ditch—[In an anguished voice.] Well?
THE BLACKBIRD [In genuine surprise.] Well, what?
THE PHEASANT-HEN Their conspiracy—
THE BLACKBIRD [Calmly.] It all went off very nicely.
THE PHEASANT-HEN What do you mean?
THE BLACKBIRD The shadow was a correct and appropriate blue, and the Owls said perfectly characteristic things.
THE PHEASANT-HEN [In wild alarm.] Heavens, they plotted his death?
THE BLACKBIRD His decease, which is not nearly so bad.
THE PHEASANT-HEN But—
THE BLACKBIRD Don't smite your brow! In spite of the Screech-Owl's grave and self-important tone, I shouldn't wonder if it all amounted to very little.
THE PHEASANT-HEN Those Owls—
THE BLACKBIRD Are good enough in their various parts, but it's the old excessive style of acting.
THE PHEASANT-HEN I beg your pardon?
THE BLACKBIRD Back numbers!
THE PHEASANT-HEN Oh?
THE BLACKBIRD They have eyelashes, fancy, all the way round their eyes! It's too much of a good thing, really.—And that black plot, those desperately dark designs, all that belongs to the year one; you can see moss growing on its back!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Fluttering hither and thither feverishly.] I am never quite sure of understanding when a person is talking in fun.
THE BLACKBIRD [Winking at her.] No flies on your acting!
THE PHEASANT-HEN Surely you wouldn't be laughing if he were in danger? Those ruffians—?
THE BLACKBIRD Prattlers! Wooden Swords! Knights of Hot Air!
THE PHEASANT-HEN But Scops—?
THE BLACKBIRD A stuffed Owl!
THE PHEASANT-HEN And the Great Bubo—?
THE BLACKBIRD Just two ten-candle-power lamps, to be turned on and off with a switch,—crick-crack! And Flammeolus, two lamps likewise—but acetylene!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Bewildered by his imagery.] And so—?
THE BLACKBIRD No, trembling Gypsy, there's not enough in this great plot to choke a flea withal!
THE PHEASANT-HEN Truly? I have been so horribly afraid—
THE BLACKBIRD Fear, I warn you, lovely Zingara, leads to dyspepsia! It's because he keeps his eye closed and buried in the sand that the ostrich has preserved his famous digestion!
THE PHEASANT-HEN So it might seem.
THE BLACKBIRD We have in these latter days bowed Tragedy respectfully out of the house!
THE PHEASANT-HEN But had we not best warn Chantecler, so that—
THE BLACKBIRD He would go instantly and challenge them. And then such a whetting of steel!
THE PHEASANT-HEN You are right. So he would.
THE BLACKBIRD On your principle, mad Gitana, an oak-gall could be made into a world.
THE PHEASANT-HEN You have much good sense.
THE BLACKBIRD Daughter of the forest, I have.
CHANTECLER'S VOICE [Outside.] Coa—
THE PHEASANT-HEN Chantecler!
CHANTECLER [Approaching on the left, between the hollies, calls from afar.] Who is there?
THE PHEASANT-HEN It is I!
CHANTECLER [Still from a distance.] Alone?
THE PHEASANT-HEN [With a significant look at the BLACKBIRD.] Yes, alone.
THE BLACKBIRD [Understanding.] I vanish—I am off to supper.
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Low to the BLACKBIRD.] And so—?
THE BLACKBIRD [Motioning her to be silent.] Keep it dark! [As he is leaving, by the right, in the manner of one giving an order to a waiter.] Earwigs for one!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Low.] It is wiser, you think, not to tell him?
THE BLACKBIRD [Before disappearing among the flower-pots.] Well, rather!
SCENE THIRD
THE PHEASANT-HEN, CHANTECLER.
CHANTECLER [Who has reached the PHEASANT-HEN'S side.] Out so early?
THE PHEASANT-HEN To see the daybreak.
CHANTECLER [With repressed emotion.] Ah—?
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Teasingly.] What troubles you?
CHANTECLER I have had a wretched night.
THE PHEASANT-HEN So sorry! [A pause.]
CHANTECLER Are you going to the Guinea-hen's?
THE PHEASANT-HEN I stayed over solely for that purpose.
CHANTECLER Ah, yes, I know. [A pause.] I dislike her extremely.
THE PHEASANT-HEN Come to her party.
CHANTECLER No.
THE PHEASANT-HEN As you please. Then we may as well say good-bye.
CHANTECLER No.
THE PHEASANT-HEN Come to the Guinea-hen's. We shall have a chance to see something of each other there.
CHANTECLER No.
THE PHEASANT-HEN You are determined not to come?
CHANTECLER I am coming—but I hate it.
THE PHEASANT-HEN Why?
CHANTECLER It is weak.
THE PHEASANT-HEN No, no! That is no great sign of weakness!
CHANTECLER Ah—?
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Softly, coming closer to him.] What would be showing a sweet, delightful, and fully masculine weakness—
CHANTECLER [In alarm at her approach.] What?
THE PHEASANT-HEN Would be to tell me your secret. Oh, just a wee bit!
CHANTECLER [With a start.] The secret of my song?
THE PHEASANT-HEN Yes.
CHANTECLER Golden Hen, my secret—
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Coaxingly.] Often from the edge of the woods I hear you in the first golden glimmer of day—
CHANTECLER [Flattered.] My song has reached your shapely little ear?
THE PHEASANT-HEN It has!
CHANTECLER [Abruptly, moving away from her.] My secret—Never!
THE PHEASANT-HEN You are not very gallant!
CHANTECLER No—I am full of conflict and misery.
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Languidly reciting.] The Cock and the Pheasant-hen a Fable—
CHANTECLER [Half aloud.] A Cock loved a Pheasant-hen—
THE PHEASANT-HEN And would not tell her anything—
CHANTECLER Moral—
THE PHEASANT-HEN It was horrid of him!
CHANTECLER [Pressing close to her.] Moral: Your dress has the fascinating rustle of silk!
THE PHEASANT-HEN Moral: I dislike familiarity! [Withdrawing from him.] Go home to your Hen of the plebeian petticoat!
CHANTECLER [Stamping.] I shall be angry!
THE PHEASANT-HEN No, no, don't be angry—Say "Coa—" [They stand bill to bill.]
CHANTECLER [Angrily.] Coa—
THE PHEASANT-HEN No, no! Say it nicely—
CHANTECLER [In a long, tender coo.] Coa—
THE PHEASANT-HEN Look at me without laughing. Your secret—
CHANTECLER Well?
THE PHEASANT-HEN You are dying to tell it to me!
CHANTECLER Yes, I feel that I shall tell, and I know I shall do ill in telling. And it's all because of the gold on her dainty little head! [Going brusquely nearer to her.] Shall you prove worthy, at least, of having been chosen? Is your breast true red to the core?
THE PHEASANT-HEN Now tell me!
CHANTECLER Look at me, Pheasant-hen, and try, if indeed it be possible, try to recognise, by yourself, sign by sign, the vocation of which my body is the symbol. Guess, to begin with, at my destiny from my shape, and see how, curved like a sort of living hunting-horn, I am as much formed for sound to turn and gain volume within me, as the wild duck is formed to swim!—Wait!—Mark the fact that, impatient and proud, scratching up the earth with my claws, I appear always to be seeking something in the soil—
THE PHEASANT-HEN You are seeking for grains of corn, seeds, I suppose.
CHANTECLER Never! I have never looked for such things. I find them occasionally, into the bargain, but disdainfully I give them to my Hens.
THE PHEASANT-HEN Well, then, in your perpetual scratching, what is it you are looking for?
CHANTECLER The right spot! For always before singing I carefully choose my stand. Pray, observe—
THE PHEASANT-HEN True, and then you ruffle your feathers.
CHANTECLER I never start to sing until my eight claws, after clearing a space of weeds and stones, have found the soft, dark turf underneath. Then, placed in direct contact with the good earth, I sing!—And that is already half the mystery, Pheasant-hen, half the mystery of my song, which is not of those songs one sings after composing them, but is received straight from the native soil, like sap! And the time above all when that sap arises in me,—the hour, briefly, in which I have genius, in which I can never doubt I have!—is the hour when dawn falters on the boundaries of the dark sky. Then, filled with the same quivering as leaves and grass, thrilled to the very tips of my wing quills, I feel myself a chosen instrument. I accentuate my curve of a hunting-horn, Earth speaks in me as in a conch, and ceasing to be an ordinary bird, I become the mouthpiece, in some sort official, through which the cry of the earth escapes toward the sky!
THE PHEASANT-HEN Chantecler!
CHANTECLER And that cry which rises from the earth, that cry is such a cry of love for the light, is such a deep and frenzied cry of love for the golden thing we call the Day, and that all thirst to feel again: the pine on its bark, the tortuous roots in woodland paths on their mosses, the feather-grass on each delicate spray, the tiniest pebble in its tiniest mica flake; it is so wonderfully the cry of all that misses and mourns its colour, its reflection, its flame, its coronet, its pearl; the beseeching cry of the dew-washed meadow begging for a wee rainbow at every grass-tip, of the forest begging a burst of fire at the end of each gloomy avenue; that cry which mounts to the sky through me is so greatly the cry of all that feels itself in disgrace, plunged in a sunless pit, deprived of light without knowing for what offence; is the cry of cold, the cry of fear, the cry of weariness, of all that night disables or disarms; the rose shivering alone in the dark, the hay wanting to be dried and go to the mow, the sickle forgotten out of doors by the reaper and fearing it will rust in the grass, the white things dismayed at not looking white; is so greatly the cry of the innocent among beasts, who have nothing to conceal, of the brook fain to show its crystal clearness; and even—for thy very works, O Night, disown thee!—of the puddle longing to glisten, the mud longing to become earth again, by drying; it is so greatly the magnificent cry of the field impatient to feel its wheat and barley growing, of the blossoming tree mad for still more blossoms of the green grapes craving a purple side; of the bridge waiting for footsteps, for shadows of birds among shadows of branches; the voice of all that yearns to sing, to drop the garb of mourning, live again, serve again, be a brink, be a bourn, a sun-warm seat, a stone glad to comfort with warmth the hand touching, or the insect overcrawling it; finally, it is so greatly the cry toward the light of all Beauty, all Health, all which wishes, in sunshine and joy, to see its work while doing it, and do it to be seen—And when I feel that vast call to the Day arising within me, I so expand my soul to make it more sonorous, by making it more spacious, that the great cry may still be increased in greatness; before giving it, I withold it in my soul a moment so piously; then, when, to expel it, I contract my soul, I am so convinced of accomplishing a great act, I have such faith that my song will make night crumble like the walls of Jericho—
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Frightened.] Chantecler!
CHANTECLER And sounding its victory beforehand, my song springs forth so clear, so proud, so peremptory, that the horizon, seized with a rosy trembling—obeys!
THE PHEASANT-HEN Chantecler!
CHANTECLER I sing! Vainly Night offers to compromise, offers a dubious twilight—I sing again! And suddenly—
THE PHEASANT-HEN Chantecler!
CHANTECLER I fall back, blinded by the red light bathing me, dazzled at having, I, the Cock, made the Sun to rise!
THE PHEASANT-HEN Then the whole secret of your song—?
CHANTECLER Is that I dare assume that the East without me must rest in idleness! I sing, not to hear the echo repeat, a shade fainter, my song! I think of light and not of glory! Singing is my fashion of waging war and bearing witness. And if my song is the proudest of songs, it is that I sing clearly to make the day rise clear!
THE PHEASANT-HEN What he says sounds slightly mad!—You are responsible for the rising of—
CHANTECLER That which opens flower, eye, soul, and window! Certainly! My voice dispenses light! And when the sky is grey, the reason is that I have sung badly.
THE PHEASANT-HEN But when you sing by day?
CHANTECLER I am practising, or else promising the ploughshare, the hoe, the harrow, the scythe, not to neglect my duty of waking them.
THE PHEASANT-HEN But what wakens you?
CHANTECLER The fear of forgetting.
THE PHEASANT-HEN And you believe that at the sound of your voice the whole world is suffused—?
CHANTECLER I have no clear idea of the whole world. But I sing for my own valley, and desire that every Cock may do the same for his.
THE PHEASANT-HEN Still—
CHANTECLER But here I stand, explaining, perorating, and forgetting altogether to make my dawn.
THE PHEASANT-HEN His dawn!
CHANTECLER Ah, what I say sounds mad? I will make the dawn before your very eyes! And the wish to please you adding its ardour to the ordinary forces of my soul, I shall rise in singing, as I feel, to unusual heights, and the dawn will rise more fair to-day than ever it rose before!
THE PHEASANT-HEN More fair?
CHANTECLER Assuredly,—in just the measure that strength is added to the song by the knowledge of listeners, boldness to the exploit by the consciousness of lovely watching eyes—[Taking his stand upon a hillock at the back, overlooking the valley.] Now, Madam!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Gazing at his outline against the sky.] How beautiful he is!
CHANTECLER Look attentively at the sky. Already it has paled. The reason is that a short while back, with my earliest crow I ordered the sun to stand in readiness just below the horizon.
THE PHEASANT-HEN He is so beautiful that what he says almost seems possible!
CHANTECLER [Talking toward the horizon.] Ha, Sun, I feel you just behind there, stirring—and I laugh with pride and joy amidst my scarlet wattles—[Rising on tiptoe suddenly, in a voice of startling loudness.] Cock-a-doodle-doo!
THE PHEASANT-HEN What great breath lifts his breast-feathers?
CHANTECLER [Toward the east.] Obey!—I am the Earth, and I am Labour! My comb is the pattern of a forge fire, and the voice of the furrow rises to my throat! [Whispering mysteriously.] Yes, yes, month of July—
THE PHEASANT-HEN To whom is he speaking?
CHANTECLER You shall have it earlier than April! [Bending to right and left, encouragingly.] Yes, Bramble!—Yes, Brake!
THE PHEASANT-HEN He is magnificent!
CHANTECLER [To the PHEASANT-HEN.] You see, I must at all times remember—[Stroking the earth with his wing.] Yes, dear Grass!—remember the humble prayers whose interpreter I become. [Talking to invisible things.] The golden ladder?—I understand! that you may all dance on it together!
THE PHEASANT-HEN To whom are you promising a ladder?
CHANTECLER To the Motes—Cock-a-doodle-doo!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Watching the sky and landscape.] A shiver of blue runs across the thatched roofs.—A star went out just then—
CHANTECLER No, it veiled itself. Even by daylight the stars are there.
THE PHEASANT-HEN You do not extinguish them?
CHANTECLER I extinguish nothing! But you shall see how great I am at kindling!
THE PHEASANT-HEN Oh, I see a dawning of—
CHANTECLER What do you see?
THE PHEASANT-HEN The blue is no longer blue!
CHANTECLER I told you! It is already green!
THE PHEASANT-HEN The green is turning to orange—
CHANTECLER You will have been the first this morning to see the transformation!
[The distant plain takes on velvety purplish hues.]
THE PHEASANT-HEN It all seems to end in leagues of purple heather.
CHANTECLER [Whose crow is beginning to tire.] Cock-a-doo—
THE PHEASANT-HEN Oh—yellow among the pine trees!
CHANTECLER Gold it ought to be,—gold!
THE PHEASANT-HEN And pearly grey—
CHANTECLER It shall be white!—I haven't done it yet! Cock-a-doodle-doo—It's very bad so far, but I won't give up!
THE PHEASANT-HEN Every hollow in every tree is pink as a wild rose—
CHANTECLER [With growing enthusiasm.] Since love lends me strength in addition to faith, I say the Day to-day shall be more beautiful that the Day!—Do you see? Do you see the eastern sky at my voice dappling itself with light?
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Lured along and half persuaded by the madness of the COCK.] Such a thing might be, after all, since love is involved in the mystery!
CHANTECLER Resume, horizon, at my command, your fringe of little poplars!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Bending over the valley.] There emerges from the shadow, gradually, a world of your creation—
CHANTECLER Sacred things you are witnessing—To sacred things I am initiating you!—Define your outlines, distant hills! Pheasant-hen, do you love me?
THE PHEASANT-HEN We shall always love to be in the secret of the Makers of Dawn!
CHANTECLER You help me to sing better. Come closer. Collaborate.
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Springing to his side.] I love you!
CHANTECLER Every word you whisper in my ear shall be translated into sunshine for all the world to see!
THE PHEASANT-HEN I love you!
CHANTECLER Say it again, and I will gild that mountain suddenly!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Wildly.] I love you!—Let me see you gild it!
CHANTECLER [In his greatest, most splendid manner.] Cock-a-doodle-doo! [The mountain turns golden.]
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Pointing to the lower ranges, still purple.] But the hills?
CHANTECLER Each in its turn. To the highest peaks belong the earliest rays! Cock-a-doodle-doo!
THE PHEASANT-HEN Ah!—across yonder drowsing slope a stealing gleam—
CHANTECLER [Joyously.] I dedicate it to you!
THE PHEASANT-HEN The distant villages are coming into view.
CHANTECLER Cock-a—[His voice breaks.]
THE PHEASANT-HEN You are weary!
CHANTECLER [Stiffening himself.] I refuse to be! [Wildly.] Cock-a-doodle-doo!
THE PHEASANT-HEN Exhausted!
CHANTECLER Do you see those tatters of mist still clinging? Cock-a-doodle-doo!
THE PHEASANT-HEN You will kill yourself!
CHANTECLER I only live, dear, when I am killing myself giving great splendid cries!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Pressing close to his side.] I am proud of you!
CHANTECLER [With emotion.] Your head bows—
THE PHEASANT-HEN I listen to the Day arising in your breast! I delight to hear first in your lungs what by-and-by will be purple and gold on the mountain sides!
CHANTECLER [While the little distant houses begin to smoke in the dawn.] I dedicate to you moreover those reawakened farmsteads. Man offers trinkets, I—wreaths and plumes of smoke!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Looking off.] I can see your work growing,—growing in the distance.
CHANTECLER [Looking at her.] I can see it in your eyes!
THE PHEASANT-HEN Over the meadows—
CHANTECLER On your throat—[In a smothered voice.] Oh, it is exquisite!
THE PHEASANT-HEN What?
CHANTECLER I am at once doing my duty, and making you more fair. I am gilding my valley, while brightening your wing. [Tearing himself from love, and dashing toward the right.] But the shadow still fights all along the line of retreat. There is much to be done over there! Cock-a-doodle-doo!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Looking up at the sky.] Oh, look!
CHANTECLER [Looking too, sadly.] How can I prevent it? The morning star is fading out!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [In a tone of regret for the little bright spark which the growing light must necessarily quench.] It is fading out—
CHANTECLER Alas!—But shall we therefore despond? [And tearing himself from melancholy, he springs toward the left.] There is still much to do over here. Cock-a—[At this point the crowing of other COCKS ascends from the valley. CHANTECLER listens, then softly.] Hark! Do you hear them now?
THE PHEASANT-HEN Who dare—?
CHANTECLER The other Cocks.
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Bending above the plain.] They are singing in the rosy light—
CHANTECLER Yes, they believe in the light as soon as they see it.
THE PHEASANT-HEN They sing all in a haze of blue—
CHANTECLER I sang in total blackness. My song rose from the cheerless shade, and was the first to rise. It is when Night prevails that it's fine to believe in the Light!
THE PHEASANT-HEN How dare they sing when you are singing?
CHANTECLER Let them sing! Their songs acquire significance from mingling with mine, and their tardy but numerous cries unconsciously hasten the flight of the dark. [Straightening upon his hillock, he calls to the distant COCKS.] Now, all together!
CHANTECLER AND ALL THE COCKS Cock-a-doodle-doo!
CHANTECLER [Alone, with familiar cordiality.] Forward, forward, boldly, Day!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Beside him, stamping her feet.] Boldly, Day!
CHANTECLER [Crying encouragements to the Light.] Yes, there, there before you, is a roof for you to gild! Come, come, a touch of green on that patch of waving hemp!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Beside herself with excitement.] A glimmer of white on that road!
CHANTECLER A wash of blue on the river!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [In a great cry.] The Sun! Look, the Sun!
CHANTECLER There he is, I can see him, but we must hale him from that grove! [And both of them, moving backward together, appear to be drawing something after them. CHANTECLER prolonging his crow as if to drag up the SUN by it.] Cooooooo—
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Shouting above CHANTECLER'S crow.] There he comes—
CHANTECLER —oock-a—
THE PHEASANT-HEN —climbing—
CHANTECLER —doodle—
THE PHEASANT-HEN —above—
CHANTECLER —doooooo!
THE PHEASANT-HEN —the poplars!
CHANTECLER [In a last, dry-throated, desperate crow.] Cock-a-doodle-doo [Both stagger, suddenly flooded with light.] It is done! [He adds, in a tone of satisfaction.] A proper Sun,—a giant! [He totters toward a mossy rise and drops against it.]
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Running to him, while all grows brighter and brighter.] One song now to greet the beautiful rising Sun!
CHANTECLER [Very low.] I have no voice left. I spent it all. [Hearing the other COCKS crowing in the valley, he adds gently.] It matters not. He has the songs and praises of the others.
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Surprised.] What? After he appears, he hears no more from you?
CHANTECLER No more.
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Indignant.] But in that case, perhaps the Sun believes the other Cocks have made him rise?
CHANTECLER It matters not.
THE PHEASANT-HEN But—
CHANTECLER Hush! Come to my heart and let me thank you. Never has there been a lovelier dawn.
THE PHEASANT-HEN But what will repay you for all your pains?
CHANTECLER Echoes of awakening life down in the valley! [Confused living noises are beginning to mount from below.] Tell me of them. I have not the strength to listen for myself.
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Runs to the top of the rise, and listens.] I hear a finger knocking against the rim of a brazen sky—
CHANTECLER [With closed eyes.] The Angelus.
THE PHEASANT-HEN Other strokes, which sound like a human Angelus after the divine—
CHANTECLER The forge-hammer.
THE PHEASANT-HEN Lowing,—then a song—
CHANTECLER The plow.
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Continuing to listen.] Sounds as of a bird's nest fallen into the little street—
CHANTECLER [With growing emotion.] The school!
THE PHEASANT-HEN Imps of whom I catch no glimpse buffet one another in the water—
CHANTECLER Women washing linen.
THE PHEASANT-HEN And suddenly, on all sides, what are they—iron locusts rubbing their wings together?
CHANTECLER [Half rising, in the fullness of pride.] Ah, if scythes are whetting, the reapers will soon be harvesting the golden grain! [The sounds increase and mingle: bells, hammers, washer-women's wooden spades, laughter, singing, grinding of steel, cracking of whips.] All at work! And I have done that!—Oh, impossible!—Pheasant-hen, help me! This is the dreadful moment! [He looks wildly about him.] I made the sunrise! I did! Wherefore And how? And where? No sooner does my reason return—than I go mad! For I who believe I have power to rekindle the celestial gold—I—well—oh, it is dreadful—
THE PHEASANT-HEN What is?
CHANTECLER I am humble-minded, modest! You will never tell?
THE PHEASANT-HEN No, no!
CHANTECLER You promise? Ah! let my enemies never know!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Moved.] Chantecler!
CHANTECLER I feel myself unworthy of my glory. Why was I chosen, even I, to drive out black night? No sooner have I brought the heavens to a white glow, than the pride which lifted me aloft drops dead. I fall to earth. What, I, so small, I made the immeasurable dawn? And having done this, I must do it again? Nay, but I cannot! Nay, it would be vain! Never need I attempt it! Despair overtakes me—Comfort me, love!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Tenderly.] My own!
CHANTECLER Such a burden of responsibility resting upon me! That inspiring breath which I await when I scratch in the sand, will it come again? I feel the whole future depending upon an incomprehensible something which might perchance fail me! Do you understand now the anguish gnawing me? Ah, the swan is certain, by bending his neck, to find under water the grasses he delights in; the eagle, when he swoops from the blue, sure of falling upon his prey; and you are ever sure of finding in the earth the well supplied nests of the ants,—but I, for whom my own work remains a mystery, I, possessed ever by the fear of the morrow, am I sure of finding my song in my heart?
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Clasping him with her wings.] Surely, you will find it, surely!
CHANTECLER Yes, talk to me like that. I listen, I heed you. You must believe me when I believe, and not when I doubt. Tell me again—
THE PHEASANT-HEN You are beautiful!
CHANTECLER About that I care very little.
THE PHEASANT-HEN And you sang beautifully!
CHANTECLER Say that I sang badly, but tell me that it is I who make—
THE PHEASANT-HEN Indeed, indeed, I admire you beyond all bounds and measure!
CHANTECLER No,—tell me that what I told you is true—
THE PHEASANT-HEN What?
CHANTECLER That it is I who make—
THE PHEASANT-HEN Yes, my glorious Beloved, yes, it is you who make the dawn appear!
THE BLACKBIRD [Suddenly appearing.] Well, well, old man!
SCENE FOURTH
THE SAME, THE BLACKBIRD
CHANTECLER The Blackbird!—My secret!
THE BLACKBIRD [Bowing with every sign of admiration.] Allow me to—
CHANTECLER That inveterate mocker! [To the PHEASANT-HEN.] Leave us not alone! My soul is still open—his mockery would enter in!
THE BLACKBIRD Ripping!
CHANTECLER Where have you come from?
THE BLACKBIRD [Indicating an empty overturned flower-pot.] From that flower-pot.
CHANTECLER But how—?
THE BLACKBIRD I was having my early snack cozily in the earthenware retreat you see, when suddenly—oh, allow me to express at once the amazement, the admiration—
CHANTECLER Eavesdropping inside a pot! How can you stoop to—
THE BLACKBIRD Hang the pot! I've had a sensation! I tell you I was wild! My feet were doing such a horn-pipe I had trouble to keep my eye steady at the peep-hole.
THE PHEASANT-HEN You could see us?
THE BLACKBIRD [Showing the hole at the bottom of the flower-pot.] Could I see you! Yonder stump of red cone has exactly the black hole to let through my yellow bill. Apologies,—but it was too tempting! A bird of taste, I am.
THE PHEASANT-HEN For the sake of this sincere tribute, I forgive you all the rest!
CHANTECLER But—
THE BLACKBIRD [Coming and going in excitement.] Oh, wonderful, and again wonderful, and then again wonderful!—Hear me rant!
CHANTECLER [Amazed.] What, is it possible that you—?
THE BLACKBIRD Am I given to gush? This time, old man, it's the genuine article, Enthusiasm with a capital E!
CHANTECLER Are you in earnest?
THE BLACKBIRD Must I send you a blankety carrier-pigeon with the news?—That Cock and that crow,—oh, my soul!—And then the day breaking,—oh, my stars!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [To CHANTECLER.] There seems to be no reason, dear, why I should not leave you alone together.
CHANTECLER But where are you going?
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Slightly ashamed of her own frivolity.] I am going to the—
THE BLACKBIRD The Guinea-hen's Day he's just given the finishing touches to!
CHANTECLER [To the PHEASANT-HEN.] Must I go too?
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Tenderly.] No, after rising to such heights, I think you may be excused from the Guinea-hen's at home!
CHANTECLER [With a touch of sadness.] You, however, are going?
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Gaily.] I want to show off your sunshine on my dress! I will be back directly. Wait for me here.
THE BLACKBIRD Yes, much better keep out of the way.
CHANTECLER [Looking at him.] Wherefore?
THE BLACKBIRD [Quickly.] Nothing! [Falling into fresh ecstasies.] Oh, this blessed Cock of ours!
CHANTECLER [To the PHEASANT-HEN.] You will not be long?
THE PHEASANT-HEN The merest moment. [Low to him before leaving.] You see, even the Blackbird is impressed! [She flies off.]
SCENE FIFTH
CHANTECLER, THE BLACKBIRD
CHANTECLER [Coming back to the BLACKBIRD.] And so that habitual skeptical sneer—?
THE BLACKBIRD Wiped out! My satirical whistling, as the Dog called it, now expresses pure admiration. Listen, like this: [He whistles admiringly.] Tew!—How is that?—Tew-tew [Nodding soberly.] That's all right!
CHANTECLER [Innocently.] You are not such a bad fellow, after all. I said so to the Dog.
THE BLACKBIRD [With profound conviction.] You're a wonderful old boy!
CHANTECLER [Modestly.] Oh!
THE BLACKBIRD To come it over the Hens—[He again whistles Admiringly.] make them believe that he engineers the dawn! [CHANTECLER starts.] A simple idea, but it took you to get on to it! Brother, I believe you were hatched in Columbus' egg!
CHANTECLER But—
THE BLACKBIRD All other Don Juans are donkeys beside you! Says he to himself: Make the daybreak to impress little pheasant-hens! And does it, too—succeeds!
CHANTECLER [In a smothered voice.] Be still!
THE BLACKBIRD Neat, the little roof which must be gilded! Complete, the ladder for the Motes!
CHANTECLER [In a spasm of pain.] Be still!
THE BLACKBIRD And the access of modesty, a sweet little final touch! I kiss my hand to you! Oh, he knows how—no mistake he knows—
CHANTECLER [Constraining himself, in a curt voice.] The Dawn? Certainly, I know her. I think I may claim that honor!
THE BLACKBIRD You precious fakir! Don't you consider you have succeeded?
CHANTECLER In bringing on the day? Yes, certainly, I have succeeded admirably, in this case.
THE BLACKBIRD Oh, you do it so well! How awfully well he does it!
CHANTECLER Making the light? Of course, I have done it so often! I am used to it. The Sun obeys me.
THE BLACKBIRD So, worthy Joshua! You feel the dawn coming, and then you crow! For lightness of touch and richness of invention, give us a lyric poet!
CHANTECLER [Bursting forth.] Wretch!
THE BLACKBIRD [Surprised.] Are you keeping it up with me? [Winking.] Oh, we know how the thing is done!
CHANTECLER You may know,—not I! I just open my heart and sing!
THE BLACKBIRD [Hopping about.] That's the idea!
CHANTECLER Blackbird, laugh at everything besides, but not at that, if you love me!
THE BLACKBIRD I love you!
CHANTECLER [Bitterly.] With half a heart!
THE BLACKBIRD Can't say a word about his Fiat Lux?
CHANTECLER Not that! Not that!
THE BLACKBIRD Old man, it's not my fault that I'm no gull.
CHANTECLER [Looking after him as he hops about.] He cannot keep still long enough, I suppose, to let the sacred truth sink in. [Trying to stop him in his hopping.] You behold the agony of emotion shaking me. No more baffle and keep me off with words!
THE BLACKBIRD [Hopping past him.] Catch, if you can, and convince me!
CHANTECLER [Imploring.] It's a matter of life—my profoundest life! Oh, convince you I must, if only for a second! I feel the holy impulse to struggle with your soul!
THE BLACKBIRD [Hopping past him.] Do you!
CHANTECLER In solemn earnest, at the bottom of your heart, you did—did you not?—believe me?
THE BLACKBIRD I believe you!
CHANTECLER [With pressing anguish.] You must in some manner be aware of the dreadful cost to me of that song? Come, use your reason. To sing as you heard me sing, you must realise that I needed—
THE BLACKBIRD A whopping muscle and a tolerable nerve!
CHANTECLER No, let us not make light of serious things, responsible winged creatures that we are!
THE BLACKBIRD Let us go in for heavy-weight truths, by all means!
CHANTECLER But can't you see that to look straight at the sun, rising before his eyes by the exertions of his larynx, one must have at the same time—
THE BLACKBIRD Stentorian lungs and the eyes of a lynx! [He hops out of the way.]
CHANTECLER [Controlling himself.] No, I cannot give up the hope of winning this soul to the truth! [With desperate patience.] Come, now, have you any conception, unhappy bird, of what dawn actually is?
THE BLACKBIRD I should say so! It's the time of day when fluffy Aurora gets busy, as it were, and plays ball!
CHANTECLER But what do you say when you see the dawn shining upon the mountains?
THE BLACKBIRD Mountains, I say, what on earth are you blushing about?
CHANTECLER And what do you say when you hear me singing in the furrow long before the cricket is awake?
THE BLACKBIRD Cricket, I say, you scandalous slug-a-bed! [He hops out of the way.]
CHANTECLER [Beside himself.] Are you conscious of no impulse to exclaim, cry out, when I have made a dawn so fine and fiery-red that the heron, flying in the early glow, looks from afar like a flamingo?
THE BLACKBIRD Sure, brother, sure! I feel like shouting, "Bully, do it again!" [He hops out of the way.]
CHANTECLER [Exhausted.] That soul! I am more spent with chasing it than with a whole day's grasshopper hunting! [Violently.] Did you not see the sky?
THE BLACKBIRD [Simply.] How could I? The ground is all you can see through that little black hole. [Pointing at the flower-pot.]
CHANTECLER Did you see the mountain-tops tremble and turn crimson?
THE BLACKBIRD While you were crowing, I had my eye on your feet.
CHANTECLER [Sorrowfully.] Ah!
THE BLACKBIRD They were performing on the soft sod something choice in the line of fancy dances!
CHANTECLER [Giving up.] I pity you! Back to your darkness, obscure Blackbird!
THE BLACKBIRD Your obedient servant, illustrious Cock!
CHANTECLER My course is toward the sun!
THE BLACKBIRD Take along smoked glasses!
CHANTECLER Blackbird, do you know the one thing upon earth worthy that one should live wholly for its sake?
THE BLACKBIRD There I draw the line. I won't enter the debate!
CHANTECLER That thing is effort, Blackbird—effort, which uplifts and ennobles the lowest! For which reason, you, contemner of every sublime aspiration, I contemn! And that fragile roseate snail, struggling unaided to silver over a whole fagot, I honour!
THE BLACKBIRD [Snapping up the snail.] I'll make him look silly!
CHANTECLER [With a cry of horror.] Abominable! To point a joke—put out a little flame! An end. Here we part. You have no more heart than soul. [Going.]
THE BLACKBIRD [Hopping up on the fagot.] I have mind, however!
CHANTECLER [Turning, disdainfully.] That is open to discussion.
THE BLACKBIRD [Acidly.] Oh, very well! I was administering, in my merry little characteristic way, a grain of antidote against lunacy. But I wash my claws of you. Go ahead, justify the report of your enemies.
CHANTECLER [Returning.] Who? What?
THE BLACKBIRD Strut about with your bill-board: "I'm the whole show!"
CHANTECLER You associate with those who hate me?
THE BLACKBIRD Do you object?
CHANTECLER No, you pitiful jester! The habit has grown so strong, you can no more be in earnest about friendship now than anything else. [Going nearer to him.] Who are my enemies?
THE BLACKBIRD The Owls.
CHANTECLER You sorry fool! Can't you see that to believe in my destiny becomes all too easy if the Owls are against me?
THE BLACKBIRD Rest happy, then. They have a deal on—your lighting of the world being a trifle flashy for their taste—a deal on for cutting your throat.
CHANTECLER Through whom?
THE BLACKBIRD A brother bird.
CHANTECLER A Cock?
THE BLACKBIRD A Saint George of a Cock, who is to meet you—
CHANTECLER Where?
THE BLACKBIRD At the Guinea-hen's.
CHANTECLER What a farce!
THE BLACKBIRD Wait! It's one of those Cocks bred and trained for fighting, who would make just two bites of either you or me. [As CHANTECLER abruptly starts toward the back.] Where are you going?
CHANTECLER To the Guinea-hen's.
THE BLACKBIRD Ha! I forgot our knightly spurs and helmet! [He makes a feint of preventing him.] Take my advice, don't go!
CHANTECLER But I will go!
THE BLACKBIRD Hold on!
CHANTECLER [Stopping beside the flower-pot, as if amazed.] How singular!
THE BLACKBIRD What?
CHANTECLER Did I understand you to say you came out of that flower-pot?
THE BLACKBIRD You did.
CHANTECLER [Incredulous.] But how could you possibly have got into it?
THE BLACKBIRD [Getting into the pot.] I told you, and tell you again! Through that little black hole I was looking at the—[He thrusts his bill through the hole at the bottom.]
CHANTECLER The earth! And now through a little blue hole you shall look at the sky! [With a vigorous blow of his wing he turns the pot over the BLACKBIRD, who is heard fluttering beneath it, with smothered cries.] For you hate and shun the blue sky, you Dwellers in Pots! But one can force you to see at least as much as would cover a corn-flower, by overturning your pot, now and then—with the sweep of a wing! [Off.]
CURTAIN
ACT THIRD
THE GUINEA-HEN'S DAY
Corner of a kitchen-garden, enclosed on the sides by hedges. At the back, espaliers. Vegetables and flowers of all kinds. Cold frames. Among the fruit trees, an upright pole, rigged in an old frock-coat, pair of trousers, and opera hat, fills the function of scarecrow.
SCENE FIRST
The GUINEA-HEN, HENS, DUCKS, etc.; the PHEASANT-HEN, the BLACKBIRD, later PATOU.
At the rise of the curtain, multitudinous clatter and confused swarming of HENS and CHICKENS.
THE GUINEA-HEN [Going impetuously from one to the other.] How do you do? How do you do?—There is scarcely room to move! My guests reach all the way to the cucumber patch!
CHORUS [Up in the air.] Busily buzzing—
THE GUINEA-HEN A regular crush!
A HEN [Gazing at a row of huge pumpkins.] What attractive objects!
THE GUINEA-HEN Art pottery! Rather good of its kind, if I do say so!
A CHICK [Listening with his bill in the air.] Singers?
THE GUINEA-HEN Yes,—
CHORUS Busily buzzing—
THE GUINEA-HEN [In her sprightliest manner.] The Wasps! [To a CHICKEN.] How do you do? [She flits from one guest to the other.]
THE WASPS Busily buzzing Estival glees. Fill we with murmurs The mulberry trees!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Passing with the BLACKBIRD and laughing.] So you were caught?
THE BLACKBIRD [Finishing his story.] Exactly as if a hat had been plumped down over me. But I managed by beating my wings to throw off the beastly pot. [Looking around him.] Chantecler has not come yet?
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Surprised.] Is he coming?
PATOU [Suddenly appearing on the wheelbarrow, from whence he can watch the scene as from a pulpit.] I still hope he may change his mind.
THE BLACKBIRD Patou there, in the wheelbarrow?
PATOU [Shaking his surly head, and a bit of broken chain hanging from his collar.] Chantecler told me everything Blackbird, as he went by. In a towering rage I broke my chain, and am here to keep an eye on the wicked lot of you.
THE GUINEA-HEN [To the BLACKBIRD.] Has he invited himself to my party, that moth-eaten old thing?
CHORUS [Among the trees.] Our praises, Sun, our praises!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Looking upward.] Music?
THE GUINEA-HEN The Cicadas!
CHORUS OF CICADAS We simmer in thy gaze, We bask beneath thy blaze, Receive our grateful praise!
THE YOUNG GUINEA-COCK [Low and quickly to his mother.] Tsicadas, mother. You must pronounce it Tsi!
A MAGPIE [In black coat and white tie, announcing the guests as they arrive through a hole such as Chickens dig at the foot of hedges.] The Gander!
THE GANDER [Entering, jocularly.] What's all this fuss and feathers my lady? Our names called as we enter?
THE GUINEA-HEN [Demurely.] Yes, you see, expecting some rather great people, I thought it well to stand an usher at the blackthorn door.
THE MAGPIE [Announcing.] The Duck!
THE DUCK [Entering, impressed by the elegance of the occasion.] Here is style and grandeur indeed! Our names called!
THE GUINEA-HEN Yes, you see, expecting some rather great people—
THE MAGPIE The Turkey-hen!
THE TURKEY-HEN [Entering, after a supercilious glance.] This is quite more of an affair, my dear, than I was anticipating.—Names called!
THE GUINEA-HEN Yes, I had in the Magpie to supplement my usual staff.
CHORUS [Among blossoming branches.] Boom! Boom! From bloom to bloom!
THE TURKEY-HEN [Lifting her bill.] A Chorus?
THE GUINEA-HEN [Breezily.] The Bees!
CHORUS Make distant flowers Bride and groom!
THE TURKEY-HEN Wonders on every side!
THE GUINEA-HEN The Bees here, the Tsicadas yonder—[To a passing HEN.] How do you do? How do you do?
BEES [At the right.] Boom!
CICADAS [At the left.] Our praises!
BEES Boom!
CICADAS Our praises!
THE GUINEA-HEN [To the PHEASANT-HEN.] My garden produces the most remarkable of everything!
THE YOUNG GUINEA-COCK The brightest flowers!
THE GUINEA-HEN The big potatoes!
THE BLACKBIRD And peaches! Perfect peaches!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Inconvenienced by the movement and the crowd, to the BLACKBIRD.] Let us stand out of the crowd a moment, behind this watering-pot.
THE BLACKBIRD The watering-pot, alias the Intermittent Baldpate, so called because there flows from his copper scalp when he is tilted a marvelous growth of silver hair.
THE GUINEA-HEN [Spying the CAT, who, outstretched along an apple-bough is watching with half-closed eyes.] I have among my guests the Cat.
THE BLACKBIRD Tomkyns de Tomkyns! [A BIRD is heard warbling in a tree.]
THE GUINEA-HEN I have the Chaffinch!
THE BLACKBIRD Let him chaff inchworms, what care we?
THE GUINEA-HEN The Darning-needle!
THE BLACKBIRD She shall mend up Ragged Robin, now's his chance!
PATOU [More and more disgusted.] All that is supposed to be funny!
THE GUINEA-HEN [Pecking a cabbage leaf from which roll drops of dew.] I have the Dew!
PATOU [Grimly.] Your witticism for her?
THE BLACKBIRD [Brightly.] Fresh-water pearls!
THE GUINEA-HEN [Pointing out several CHICKS walking among the crowd.] Have you seen them? I have several of the A.I.'s Chicks!
THE PHEASANT-HEN A.I.?
THE GUINEA-HEN The Acme Incubator.
THE PHEASANT-HEN Oh, have you?
THE GUINEA-HEN [Presenting the CHICKS.] All from the topmost compartment!
THE PHEASANT-HEN Indeed?
ONE OF THE CHICKS [Nudging his neighbour.] She is dumbfounded!
THE GUINEA-HEN [Contemptuously.] Eggs hatched by the old vulgar method, fie!
THE BLACKBIRD, Good Lord, exempt us!
THE MAGPIE [Announcing.] The Guinea-pig!
THE GUINEA-HEN It's the famous one, you know! The Guinea-pig who was inoculated—surely you remember the case—very well, that's the one! There you see him. I made a point of getting him to come. Everybody is here! I have everybody! I have—[To the GUINEA-PIG.] How do you do? [To the PHEASANT-HEN.] I have our great philosopher Tur-Key—Yes, it should be written with a hyphen—who will give us a little talk among the currant bushes under the tea-roses—[To a passing HEN.] How do you do? [To the PHEASANT-HEN.] Educational Tea or Currant Topics! [Whirling from one to the other.] Everyone is here, everyone of the slightest mark or consequence! The Pheasant-hen is here, in a frock from fairyland. The Duck is here, who is so good as to say he will recite for us by and by. The Tortoise is here—[Noticing that the TORTOISE is not there] I was mistaken, the Tortoise is not here. She is late.
THE BLACKBIRD [Affecting deep concern.] What is the little talk she seems so regrettably likely to miss?
THE GUINEA-HEN [Suddenly serious.] The Moral Problem.
THE BLACKBIRD What a pity!
[The GUINEA-HEN goes to the back, scattering greetings, in ecstasies of sociability.]
THE PHEASANT-HEN [To the BLACKBIRD.] Who is the Tortoise?
THE BLACKBIRD A hard old character, impervious, I fear, to moral problems, who goes in for walking matches in a loud check suit!
[Murmur among the hollyhocks.]
THE PHEASANT-HEN Listen, a Drone!
THE GUINEA-HEN [Briskly returning.] The Drone is here! In the bright light overhead, what a stylish figure of a fly!
THE BLACKBIRD No "at home" complete without it! Ladies cry for it! Won't be happy until—
THE GUINEA-HEN [Jumping up in the air toward the DRONE.] How do you do? How do you do? [She follows his flight with excited leaps and hops.]
THE BLACKBIRD [Touching his brow with his wing.] She is dotty!
THE GUINEA-HEN [At the back, with shrill GUINEA-HEN cries.] It's my last day! How do you do? My last day until August! Mondays in August, don't forget!
A HEN [Seeing cherries dropping around her.] Oh, cherries, look!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Looking upward.] It is the Breeze!
THE GUINEA-HEN [Fluttering forward again, excited as ever.] I have the Breeze, who now and then shakes down a cherry! I never ask her. She comes unasked. What's-his-name is here! And What's-her-name is here, and—[To the back tumultuously.]
THE BLACKBIRD And Thingumbob, and Stick-in-the-mud! [He has arrived without appearance of design beneath the tree where the CAT is lying, and asks rapidly, under breath.] Cat, what about the conspiracy?
THE CAT [Who from his tree can see beyond the hedge.] It is afoot. I see the interminable file of phenomenal Cocks approaching, headed by the Peacock who comes to present them.
A CRY [Outside.] Ee—yong! [The CROWD throngs toward the entrance.]
PATOU [Grumbling.] That abominable concertina cry—
THE MAGPIE The Peacock!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [To the BLACKBIRD.] Have you a fancy name for him?
THE BLACKBIRD [Imitating the PEACOCK'S cry.] Our great Accordee-yong!
SCENE SECOND
THE SAME, THE PEACOCK.
THE GUINEA-HEN [To the PEACOCK, who enters slowly, with his head borne very stiff and high.] Master, dear Master, would you be so extremely condescending as to come and stand with your back to these sunflowers? Peacock! Sunflowers! A study for Burne-Jones!
ALL [Crowding around the PEACOCK.] Master! Master!
A CHICKEN [Low to the DUCK.] A word from him can make one's fortune in society!
ANOTHER CHICKEN [Who has succeeded in forcing his way to the PEACOCK, stammering with emotion.] Master, what do you think of my latest "cheep"? [Suspense. Religious silence.]
THE PEACOCK [Solemnly, letting the word drop slowly from his beak.] Definitive. [Sensation.]
A DUCK [Trembling.] And my "quack"? [Suspense.]
THE PEACOCK Ultimate! [Sensation.]
THE GUINEA-HEN [Delighted, to the HENS.] I may say that it is at my days most especially he throws off these specimens of a verbal art which might fairly be called—
THE PEACOCK Lapidary.
ALL THE HENS [Rolling up their eyes.] Wonderful!
A HEN [Coming forward, faint with emotion.] Master, high priest of taste, what do you think of my dress? [Suspense.]
THE PEACOCK [After a glance.] Affirmative. [Sensation.]
THE TUFTED HEN [Same business.] And my bonnet? [Suspense.]
THE PEACOCK Absolute. [Sensation.]
THE GUINEA-HEN [In a burst of emotion.] Our bonnets are absolute!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Affecting exclusive interest in the BEES.] Ah, there is the Choir Invisible striking up again!
THE GUINEA-HEN [Presenting the young GUINEA-COCK to the PEACOCK.] My son!—What do you think of him?
THE PEACOCK Plausible.
CHORUS OF WASPS Busily buzzing—
THE GUINEA-HEN [Overjoyed, running to the PHEASANT-HEN.] Oh, he said he was plausible!
THE PHEASANT-HEN Who was?
THE GUINEA-HEN My son!
CHORUS OF BEES
When July Too holly glows Seek the shade Inside the rose!
THE GUINEA-HEN [Returning to the PEACOCK.] Does not the rhythm of that chorus impress you as—
THE PEACOCK Asunartetos!
A HEN [To the GUINEA-HEN.] Your guest, my dear, can fit an epithet!
THE GUINEA-HEN Pontiff of the Unexpected Adjective I call him!
THE PEACOCK [Distilling his words, in a discordant haughty voice.] True it is that—
THE GUINEA-HEN Ah, this is most pleasant, most pleasant! He is going to talk to us.
THE PEACOCK —a Ruskin rather more refined, I hope, than the earlier one, with a tact—
THE GUINEA-HEN Very true!
PEACOCK —a tact for which I stand largely in my own debt, I have constituted myself Petronius-Priest and Maecenas-Messiah volatile volatiliser of words, and that, jeweled judge, I love by my cameos and filigrees of speech to represent the Taste of which I am the—
PATOU Oh, my poor head!
THE PEACOCK [Nonchalantly.]—shall I say guardian?
THE GUINEA-HEN [Effervescently.] Do say guardian!
THE PEACOCK No. Thesmothetes. [Respectful murmur of delight.]
THE GUINEA-HEN [To the PHEASANT-HEN.] Now you have seen our Peacock! Aren't you excited?
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Slightly bored.] Yes,—because I know the Cock is coming.
THE GUINEA-HEN [Delighted.] To-day? He is coming to-day? [She announces to the general company, enthusiastically.] Chantecler!
THE PEACOCK [Slightly miffed.] A far greater triumph lies in store for you, fair friend.
THE GUINEA-HEN Triumph? [The PEACOCK nods mysteriously.] What triumph?
THE PEACOCK [Walking away from her.] You shall see.
THE GUINEA-HEN [Following him.] Of what triumph are you speaking?
THE PEACOCK I said, "You shall see!"
MAGPIE [Announcing.] Cock Braekel of Campine!
SCENE THIRD
THE SAME, then gradually the COCKS.
THE GUINEA-HEN [Stopping short, amazed.] Braekel? At my party? There's some mistake.
THE BRAEKEL COCK [Bowing before her.] Madam—
THE GUINEA-HEN [Breathless with emotion in the presence of this white COCK braided with black.] This unexpected pleasure—
THE MAGPIE [Announcing.] Cock Ramelslohe—
THE GUINEA-HEN Heavens!
THE MAGPIE [Finishing.]—of the Slate-blue Claw!
THE PEACOCK [In the GUINEA-HEN'S ear, while the startling RAMELSLOHE bows.] He is one of the most recent leucotites!
THE GUINEA-HEN [Blankly.] A leucotite—How interesting!
THE MAGPIE [Announcing in a louder and louder, more and more impressive voice.] Cock Wyandotte of the Sable Spur! [Shiver of emotion among the HENS.]
THE GUINEA-HEN [Off her head with excitement.] Heavens and gracious powers—my son!
THE YOUNG GUINEA-COCK [Running to her.] Mamma!
THE GUINEA-HEN Wyandotte! Cock Wyandotte!
THE PEACOCK [With a fine carelessness.] Cock with strawberry coronet, product of Art Nouveau!
THE GUINEA-HEN [To the newcomers who are surrounded by astonished murmurs.] Strawberry coronet!—Gentlemen—
THE YOUNG GUINEA-COCK [Who has gone to take a look outside.] Mamma!
THE GUINEA-HEN —so kindly condescending to honour my poor house—
THE YOUNG GUINEA-COCK Mamma, there are still others coming!
THE MAGPIE His lordship, the Cock—
THE GUINEA-HEN Heavens, what Cock?
THE MAGPIE Cock of Mesopotamia with the Double Comb!
THE GUINEA-HEN Double! Oh! [Dashing to welcome the newcomer.] Charmed, charmed indeed!
THE PEACOCK Out upon the obsolete! I wished to show you a few young gentlemen slightly superlative and veritably precious.
THE GUINEA-HEN [Returning to the PEACOCK.] How shall I thank you, Peacock, dear friend? [To the PHEASANT-HEN, patronizingly.] You will excuse me, I know, you charming little thing. You must understand, my dear, that his lordship the Cock of Mesopotamia has just arrived! [Running to the COCK, who bows his two combs.] A proud day for us! Charmed, delighted, enchanted!
MAGPIE Cock d'Orpington of the Feather-ringed Eye!
THE GUINEA-HEN Feather-ringed—Oh!
THE BLACKBIRD The plot thickens!
THE MAGPIE [While the GUINEA-HEN is flying toward the ORPINGTON COCK.] Bearded Cock of Varna!
THE PEACOCK [To the GUINEA-HEN.] A typical Slav!
THE GUINEA-HEN [Leaving the ORPINGTON for the BEARDED COCK.] Oh, the Slav soul we have heard so much about! Charmed, beyond words, charmed!
THE MAGPIE Rose-footed Scotch Grey Cock!
THE GUINEA-HEN [Leaving the BEARDED COCK for the SCOTCH GREY.] Oh, that rose foot! I do admire that rose foot! Think of introducing that rose foot at my tea! [With conviction.] What a social event!
THE MAGPIE Cock—
THE GUINEA-HEN [Out of her senses.] No, I say, no! There can't be any more!
THE MAGPIE Cock with Goblet-shaped comb!
THE GUINEA-HEN [Who at every name rushes excitedly toward the newcomer.] Charmed, I am sure! Oh, what a novel notion! Goblet-shaped!
THE MAGPIE Blue Cock of Andalusia!
THE GUINEA-HEN Your egg, I presume, was laid in the vibrating hollow of a guitar! Delighted and honored,—both!
THE MAGPIE Cock Langsham!
THE PEACOCK A Tartar!
ALL THE HENS [Smitten with amazement at sight of the black giant.] A Tartar!
THE MAGPIE Gold-penciled Hamburg Cock!
ALL THE HENS [At sight of the gold-laced COCK in the cocked hat.] Gold-penciled Hamburg!
THE GUINEA-HEN My kitchen-garden party will be famous! [To the HAMBURG COCK, whose breast is striped with black and yellow.] Oh, what a wonderful waistcoat! May I ask what it is made of?
THE BLACKBIRD Of zebra!
THE GUINEA-HEN Zebra, you don't say so! It will be the pride of my life, of my whole—
THE MAGPIE Cock—
THE GUINEA-HEN [Jumping.] No, I can't believe it!
THE MAGPIE —of Burma!
THE GUINEA-HEN Burma! [Increasing general agitation.]
THE PEACOCK An East Indian.
THE GUINEA-HEN Oh, I can see his Hindu soul right in his eyes, the Hindu soul we hear so much about! [Running to the newcomer, in an adoring voice.] Charmed, charmed! The Hindu soul—oh!
THE MAGPIE Padua Cocks—The Dutch Padua of Poland!
THE GUINEA-HEN Dutch of Poland! This is really more than I ever aspired to!
[The PADUA COCKS enter, shaking their plumes.]
THE MAGPIE The Gold Cock! The Silver Cock!
THE GUINEA-HEN [In ecstasies of admiration before the flowing plume of the latter.] With a waterfall on his head!
THE BLACKBIRD And a suspension bridge!
THE GUINEA-HEN [No longer conscious of what she is saying.] And a suspension bridge!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [To PATOU.] Poor Guinea-hen, she will say anything after anybody!
THE MAGPIE [Announcing in a louder and louder tone ever more extraordinary COCKS.] Bagdad Cock!
THE PEACOCK [Dominating the tumult.] Consummately Arabian Nights.
THE GUINEA-HEN Did you hear? Consummately Arabian Nights!
ALL THE HENS To be sure! Awfully Arabian Nights!
THE PEACOCK Kamaralzaman himself is hardly more so.
THE MAGPIE Bantam Cock with ruffles!
THE GUINEA-HEN [Transported.] How eighteenth century this is! Look, oh, look! A dwarf! A dwarf! Dwarfs! Little cunning bits of dwarfs!
THE YOUNG GUINEA-COCK [Low.] Mamma, do control yourself!
THE GUINEA-HEN [Screaming in the midst of the COCKS.] No, no, I can't and won't! That is Kamaralzaman! I don't really know which I prefer, which I—
THE MAGPIE Guelder Cock!
THE GUINEA-HEN [Rushing to the newcomer.] This is truly a treat! Another Belgian!
THE MAGPIE Serpent-necked Cock!
THE GUINEA-HEN [Rattled.] To you, dear Seacock, I owe this Perpentneck!
THE MAGPIE Duck-sided Cock! Crow-billed Cock! Hawk-footed Cock!
THE GUINEA-HEN [Who has fallen upon the new arrivals, bursts into shrill volubility before the last of them.] This surpasses all! An albino! Charmed, my dear sir, honoured, enchanted! Oh, on his head he wears a cheese!
A HEN So he does, a cheese!—A cream cheese, to be sure! A cream cheese!
ALL THE HENS A cream cheese!
THE MAGPIE Crve Coeur Cock!
THE GUINEA-HEN [Rushing to meet him.] Oh, he has horns on his head!
THE PEACOCK Satanic.
THE MAGPIE Ptarmigan Cock!
THE PEACOCK Aesthetic.
THE GUINEA-HEN [Rushing up to him.] Oh, he wears on his head an Assyrian helmet!
THE MAGPIE White Pile—
THE GUINEA-HEN [Rushing up to him.] He wears on his head—[Stopping short at sight of his docked comb.] Nothing whatever. He wears nothing whatever on his head. How odd it looks!
THE CAT [From his apple tree, to the BLACKBIRD, indicating the WHITE PILE GAME-COCK.] There is the champion. The dust conceals a razor on his lean foot. [The GAME-COCK disappears among the throng of fancy COCKS, who are surrounded by a swarm of cackling HENS.]
THE MAGPIE Negro Cock!
THE GUINEA-HEN [Gone quite mad among the multitude of COCKS now filling the kitchen-garden with their extraordinary head-gear aigrettes, and plumes and helmets, double and triple combs.] Charmed, honoured, enchanted—enchanted, honoured, charmed!
PATOU She has taken leave of her wits!
THE GUINEA-HEN [To the empty air.] Charmed, charmed, enchanted, en—
THE MAGPIE Cock with Supernumerary Toe!—Naked-necked Cock!
THE GUINEA-HEN Naked?
THE MAGPIE Necked!
THE GUINEA-HEN [To a HEN.] My dear, now we shall see something worth while!
THE MAGPIE Japanese Cocks—Cock Splendens!
THE GUINEA-HEN [At sight of this COCK whose tail is eight yards long.] Oh!—In a swallow tail!
THE MAGPIE Clump-backed—
THE BLACKBIRD [Perceiving that this COCK is absolutely flat at the back.] In a monkey-jacket!
THE MAGPIE [Finishing.]—or Tailless Cock!
THE GUINEA-HEN [Beside herself.] He has nothing whatever behind! This is the crowning moment of my career! [To the newcomer, effusively.] Charmed! No tail! This is—
THE BLACKBIRD I like his cheek!
THE MAGPIE [While more and more heterogeneous COCKS appear.] Cock Walikikili, called Choki-kukullo! Pseudo-Chinese Cuculicolor!
THE GUINEA-HEN What a choice gathering!
THE PEACOCK Kaleidoscopically cosmopolitan.
THE MAGPIE Blue Java! White Java!
THE BLACKBIRD [Losing all shame.] Won't Java cup o' coffee?
THE GUINEA-HEN [Falling upon the JAVA COCKS.] Charmed, charmed!
THE MAGPIE Brahma Cock! Cochin Cock!
THE PEACOCK [Proudly.] The great vicious Cocks, representatives of the corrupt East, the putrescent Orient!
THE GUINEA-HEN [Intoxicated.] Putrescent!
THE PEACOCK Unwholesome, morbid grace!
THE GUINEA-HEN [To the COCHIN COCK.] Charmed! Charmed!—Do notice his obscene eye!
THE MAGPIE [Announcing wildly, infected with the general delirium.] Chili Cock, curled hindside fore! Antwerp Cock, curled inside out!
ALL THE HENS [Fighting for the newcomers.] Oh, putrescent!—Oh, hindside fore!
THE GUINEA-HEN Inside out!
THE MAGPIE Shankless Jumping-cock!
A HEN [Fainting with emotion.] I suppose he jumps with his stomach!
THE GUINEA-HEN An India-rubber Cock!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [To PATOU, who from his wheelbarrow is looking off into the distance.] And Chantecler?
PATOU Will be here soon.
THE PHEASANT-HEN Can you see him?
PATOU Yes, off there, scratching up the earth. Now he is on his way.
THE MAGPIE Ghoondook Cock with Umbrella Topknot!
CRY OF ENTHUSIASM Oh!
THE MAGPIE Iberian Cock with Lint Side Whiskers!
CRY OF ENTHUSIASM Oh!
THE MAGPIE Cock Bans Backin or Fat Cheek of Thuringia!
CRY OF ENTHUSIASM Oh!
THE MAGPIE Yankee Cochin of Plymouth Rock!
[Sudden silence. CHANTECLER has appeared at the entrance, just behind the COCK last announced.]
CHANTECLER [To the MAGPIE.] Pray simply say, "The Cock!"
SCENE FOURTH
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?
SCENE FIFTH
THE SAME, three CHICKENS, noticeable among the rest for a certain jaunty pertness of gait and demeanour, who for a minute or so have been moving among the artificial COCKS.
FIRST CHICKEN To us, of course!
SECOND CHICKEN To us!
THIRD CHICKEN To us!
ALL THREE [Bowing at once.] Good morning!
FIRST CHICKEN Your voice?
SECOND CHICKEN Tenor?
THIRD CHICKEN Bass?
SECOND CHICKEN Robusto?
THIRD CHICKEN Di cortesia?
CHANTECLER [Bewildered, looking toward the PHEASANT-HEN.] What is this? An interlude?
THE PHEASANT-HEN An interview.
SECOND CHICKEN Do you take it in your chest?
THIRD CHICKEN Or in your head?
CHANTECLER Do I take what?
FIRST CHICKEN Pray talk without reserve. We represent the Board of Investigation into the Gallodoodle Movement.
CHANTECLER That's all very well, but I—[Attempting to pass.]
FIRST CHICKEN You will find it difficult, I think, to leave, until you have answered such questions as we are pleased to ask. Is your early meal a light one?
CHANTECLER But—
SECOND CHICKEN You have tendencies, no doubt—
CHANTECLER Hosts.
SECOND CHICKEN What do you feel most particularly drawn to?
CHANTECLER Hens.
FIRST CHICKEN [Without smiling.] Have you nothing to communicate with regard to your song?
CHANTECLER I just sing.
SECOND CHICKEN And when you sing—?
CHANTECLER The heavens hear me.
THIRD CHICKEN Have you a special method?
CHANTECLER I—
FIRST CHICKEN You live—
CHANTECLER To sing!
SECOND CHICKEN And your song—?
CHANTECLER Is my life!
THIRD CHICKEN But how do you sing?
CHANTECLER I take pains.
FIRST CHICKEN But do you scan [Beating furiously with his wing.] one-one-two One-three? Three-one? Or four? What is your dynamic theory?
THE BLACKBIRD [Shouting.] Who has not his little pet dynamic theory?
CHANTECLER Dyna—?
SECOND CHICKEN Where do you place the accent? On the Cock—?
THIRD CHICKEN On the Doo?
CHANTECLER On the—
FIRST CHICKEN [Impatiently.] What is your school?
CHANTECLER Schools of Cocks?
SECOND CHICKEN [Rapidly.] Certainly. Some sing Cock-a-doodle-doo, and some Keek-a-deedle-dee!
CHANTECLER Cock—? Keek—?
THIRD CHICKEN Not to speak of those who—
A COCK [Coming forward.] The correct and proper way to crow is Cowkerdowdledow!
CHANTECLER What Cock is that?
FIRST CHICKEN An Anglo-Indian.
SECOND CHICKEN And the Turk over there, whose comb suggests a cyst, crows Coocooroocoocoo!
THIRD CHICKEN [Shouting in his ear.] Do you not upon occasions vary your Cockadoodledoo with Cackadaddledaa?
ANOTHER COCK [Springing up at the right.] I, for one, entirely suppress the vowels: C-ck-d-dl-d!
CHANTECLER [Trying to get away.] Is it a Welsh Rabbit dream?
ANOTHER COCK [Springing up at the left.] O-a-oo-e-oo! Have you ever tried suppressing the consonants?
ANOTHER COCK [Pushing aside all the others.] I mix the whole thing up—Cuck-o-deedle-daa!—in a free and supple song!
CHANTECLER My brain reels!
ALL THE COCKS [Gathered about him, fighting.] No! Cuckodee—No, Cackadaa—No, Coocooroo—
THE COCK [Who mixes all up.] The free Cockadoodle! The free crow is obligatory!
CHANTECLER Pray, who is that, speaking with such authority?
FIRST CHICKEN It is a wonderful Cock who has never sung at all.
CHANTECLER [In humble despair.] And I am only a Cock who sings!
EVERYBODY [Drawing away from him in disgust.] I wouldn't mention it if I were you!
CHANTECLER I give my song as the rose-tree gives its Rose!
THE PEACOCK [Sarcastically.] Ah, I was waiting for the Rose! [Pitying laughter.]
CHANTECLER [Low, nervously, to the BLACKBIRD.] Is my prospective slayer going to keep me waiting much longer?
EVERYONE [Disgusted.] The Rose? Oh!
THE GUINEA-HEN If you must mention flowers, let them be rather less—
THE PEACOCK Elementary. [With the most disdainful impertinence.] So you are still at the declension of Rosa?
CHANTECLER I am, you—Peacock! You, I suppose, may be forgiven for speaking slightingly of the Rose, being a rival candidate for the beauty prize. [Looking around him.] But I summon these Cocks, from Dorking to Bantam, to defend with me—
A COCK [Nonchalantly.] Pray whom?
CHANTECLER The Rose, Rosam; to declare on the spot and forthwith—
THE BLACKBIRD [Ironically.] You set yourself up as the champion—
CHANTECLER Rosarum, of roses, I do!—To declare that worship is due—
A COCK To whom, pray?
CHANTECLER To roses, rosis!—in whose hearts sleep rain-drops like essences in fragrant vials, to declare that they are, and ever will be—
A VOICE [Cold and cutting.] Painted jades, things of naught! [All the fancy COCKS draw aside, revealing the WHITE PILE GAME COCK, who appears, tall and lean and sinister at the further end of their double row.]
CHANTECLER At last!
THE BLACKBIRD It's time to climb up on the chairs!
CHANTECLER [To the WHITE PILE.] Sir—
THE PHEASANT-HEN You are never going to challenge that giant?
CHANTECLER I am! To appear tall it is sufficient to talk on stilts! [To the GAME COCK, slowly crossing the stage toward him.] Know that such a remark is not to be endured, and permit me to tell you—[Finding a CHICK between himself and the GAME COCK, he gently puts him aside, saying] Run to your mother, tot! [To the WHITE PILE, looking insolently at his docked comb]—that you look like a Fool who has mislaid his coxcomb!
THE WHITE PILE [Astonished.] Fool? Coxcomb? What? What? What?
CHANTECLER [Beak to beak with the GAME COCK.] What? What? What? [A pause. They arch themselves, with bristling neck-hackle.]
THE WHITE PILE [Emphatically.] In America, during my grand tour, I killed three Claybornes in a day. I have killed two Sherwoods, three Smoks, and one Sumatra. I have killed—let me advise anyone fighting me to take something beforehand to keep down his pulse!—three Red-game at Cambridge and ten Braekels at Bruges!
CHANTECLER [Very simply.] I, my dear sir, have never killed anything. But as I have at different times succored, defended, protected, this one and that, I might perhaps be called, in my own fashion, brave. You need not take these mighty airs with me. I came here knowing that you would come. That rose was dangled to afford you the opportunity for brutal stupidity. You did not fail to nibble at its petals. Your name?
THE GAME COCK White Pile. And yours?
CHANTECLER Chantecler.
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Running desperately to the DOG.] Patou!
CHANTECLER [To PATOU, who is growling between his teeth.] You, keep out of this!
PATOU So I will, but it's rrrrrrrough!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [To CHANTECLER.] A Cock does not risk his life for a Rose!
CHANTECLER A slur upon a flower is a slur upon the Sun!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Running to the BLACKBIRD.] Do something! This must be patched up—You know you had promised me!
THE BLACKBIRD Everything can be patched up, my dear, except the quarrels of a fellow's friends!
THE GUINEA-HEN [Giving loud cries of despair.] Horrible! Oh, horrible A five-o'clock tea at which guests kill each other! How dreadful—[To her son.] that the Tortoise should not have got here yet!
A VOICE [Crying.] Chantecler, ten against one!
THE GUINEA-HEN [Seating her company, assisting the HENS to climb upon flower-pots, cold-frames, pumpkins.] Quick! quick!
THE BLACKBIRD Our charming hostess is in great feather, doing the honours of an affair of honour.
PATOU [To CHANTECLER.] Go in and thrash him. This crowd is longing for the sight of your blood.
CHANTECLER [Sadly.] I was never anything but kind!
PATOU [Showing the ring which has formed, the faces lighted with hateful eagerness.] Look at them! [All necks are craned, all eyes shine; it is hideous. CHANTECLER looks, understands, and bows his head.]
THE PHEASANT-HEN [With a cry of rage.] It's a disgrace! A disgrace to the name of fowl!
CHANTECLER [Raising his head again.] So be it. But they shall at least learn to-day who I was, and my secret—
PATOU No, don't tell them, if it's what my old dreamer's heart has apprehended!
CHANTECLER [Addressing the multitude, in a loud voice, solemnly, like one confessing his faith.] Know, all of you, that it is I—[Deep silence falls. To the WHITE PILE, who has given a sign of impatience.] Your pardon, excellent duellist, but I have a mind, before getting myself killed, to do something brave—
THE WHITE PILE [Surprised.] Ah?
CHANTECLER Yes,—get myself laughed at!
THE PHEASANT-HEN No, dearest, no! Don't do it!
CHANTECLER I wish to perish amid salvos of laughter! [To the crowd.] Riot, spirit of Mockery! Disciples of the Blackbird, prepare! [In a still louder voice, hammering home every word.] It is I, who, by my song, bring back the light of day! [Amazement, then vast laughter shakes the multitude.] Is the merriment well under way? On guard!
THE GOLDEN PADUA COCK [Nodding his plume.] Gentlemen, engage!
VOICES [Amid storms of laughter.] Funny! Side-splitting! Was anything ever so droll? I shall die laughing!
THE BLACKBIRD The old Gallic love of a joke is not dead!
A CHICKEN He sings light into the sky!
A DUCK The Sun gets up to hear him!
CHANTECLER [Avoiding the blows which the WHITE PILE is beginning to aim at him.] Yes, it is I who give you back the Day!
A CHICK And a jolly fine day it is!
CHANTECLER [While parrying and attacking.] The crowing of other Cocks, able neither to make nor mar, is no better nor worse than sonorous sneezing! Mine—[He is wounded.]
A VOICE Biff! In the neck!
CHANTECLER —mine makes—[He is again wounded.]
THE TURKEY Insufferable self-sufficiency!
CHANTECLER —the light—[Again he is struck.]
A VOICE Biff! On the neb!
CHANTECLER —the light appear!
A VOICE Biff! In the eye!
CHANTECLER [Blinded with blood.] Yes, the light!
A VOICE [Sneering.] Better have let sleeping darkness lie!
CHANTECLER [Automatically repeating beneath his adversary's blows.] It is I who make the dawn appear!
PATOU [Barking.] Aye! Aye! Aye!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Sobbing.] Stand up to him, darling! Oh, hit back! Hit back!
A CHICK Fellows, a nickname for the dawn!
ALL Yes! Yes!
[The WHITE PILE hurls himself upon CHANTECLER.]
THE PHEASANT-HEN Oh, cruel!
THE BLACKBIRD Chantecler's Light o' Love!
A VOICE A nickname for the Cock!
ALL Yes! Yes!
THE BLACKBIRD Grand Master of Illuminations!
ANOTHER VOICE Purveyor of Sunny Beams!
CHANTECLER [Defending himself foot to foot.] Thanks! Another quip, for I can still fight with my feet!
A VOICE The Alarm-Cock!
CHANTECLER [Who seems upheld by their insults.] Another pun! And I who know no more of fighting than can be learned on a peaceful farm—
A VOICE Thresh out his hayseed!
CHANTECLER Thanks! I—[His torn feathers fly around him.]
CRY OF JOY See his fur fly!
CHANTECLER I feel—Another pleasantry!
A VOICE Lay on, Macfluff!
CHANTECLER Thanks! I feel that the more I am mocked, insulted, flouted, and denied—
AN ASS [Stretching his neck over the hedge.] Hee-haw!
CHANTECLER Thanks!—the better I shall fight!
THE WHITE PILE [Chuckling.] He is game, but he's giving out.
THE PHEASANT-HEN Enough. Enough. Oh, stop!
A VOICE On White Pile, twenty to one!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Seeing CHANTECLER'S bleeding neck.] He bleeds, oh!
A HEN [Rising on tiptoe behind the GOLDEN PADUA COCK.] I should like to see the blood!
THE WHITE PILE [Increasing the fury of his onset.] I'll have your gizzard!
THE HEN [Trying to see.] The Padua Cock's hat shuts off my view!
THE BLACKBIRD Hats off!
A VOICE That was a stinger! On his comb!
SHRILL CRIES [From the crowd.] Land him one! Do him up! Lay him out! Have his gore!
PATOU [Standing up in his wheelbarrow.] Will you stop behaving like human beings?
CRIES [Furiously keeping time with the blows showering upon CHANTECLER.] In the neck! On the nut! On the wing! On the—[Sudden silence.]
CHANTECLER [Amazed.] What is this? The ring breaks up, the shouting dies—[He looks around. The WHITE PILE has drawn away and backed against the hedge. A strange commotion agitates the crowd. CHANTECLER, exhausted, bleeding, tottering, does not understand, and murmurs.] What joke are they preparing against my end? [And suddenly.] Joy, Patou, joy!
PATOU What?
CHANTECLER I have done them an injustice. All of them, ceasing to insult and mock me, look, gather round me, closer and closer—look!
PATOU [Seeing them all, in fact, crowding around CHANTECLER, and gazing anxiously at the sky, looks up too, and says simply.] It is the hawk!
CHANTECLER Ah! [A dark shadow slowly sweeps over the motley crowd, who crouch and cower.]
PATOU When that great shadow falls, it is not the fine, strange Cocks we trust to keep off the bird of prey!
CHANTECLER [Suddenly grown great of size, his wounds forgotten, stands in the midst of them, and in an authoritative tone.] Yes, close around me, all of you, all! [All, huddled in their feathers, their heads drawn in between their wings, press against him.]
THE PHEASANT-HEN Dear, brave, and gentle heart!
CHANTECLER [The shadow sweeps over the crowd a second time. The GAME COCK makes himself small. CHANTECLER alone remains standing, in the midst of a heap of ruffled, trembling feathers.]
A HEN [Looking up at the HAWK.] Twice the black shadow has swept over us!
CHANTECLER [Calling to the CHICKS, who come madly running.] Chicks, come here to me!
THE PHEASANT-HEN You take them under your wing?
CHANTECLER I must. Their mother is a box!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Looking upward.] He hovers over us—[The shadow of the HAWK, circling lower and lower, passes for the third time, darker than ever.]
ALL [In a moan of fear.] Ah!
CHANTECLER [Shouting toward the sky.] I am here!
PATOU He has heard your trumpet cry!
THE PHEASANT-HEN He flies further.
[All rise with a joyous cry of deliverance, "Ah!" and go back to their places to watch the end of the combat.]
PATOU Without loss of a moment they form the ring again.
CHANTECLER [With a start.] What did you say? [He looks. It is true, the ring has immediately formed.]
THE PHEASANT-HEN Now they want you killed to be revenged for their fine scare.
CHANTECLER But now I shall not be killed! I felt my strength come back when the common enemy flew across the sky. [Striding boldly up to the WHITE PILE.] I got back my courage, fearing for the others.
THE WHITE PILE [Amazed at being smartly attacked.] Whence has he drawn new strength?
CHANTECLER I am thrice stronger now than you. Black excites me, you see, as red excites the bull, and thrice I have stared at night in the form of a bird's shadow!
THE WHITE PILE [Driven to bay, against the hedge, prepares to use his razors.]
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Screaming.] Look out! He has two sharp razors at his heels, the beast!
CHANTECLER I knew it!
THE CAT [From his tree, to the GAME COCK.] Use your knives!
PATOU [Ready to spring from his wheelbarrow.] If he uses those, I'll strangle him, that's all!
THE CROWD Oh!
PATOU I will! Howl you never so loud!
THE WHITE PILE [Feeling himself lost.] No help for it!
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Closely watching him.] He is getting one of his razors ready!
THE WHITE PILE [Striking with his sharp spur.] Take that! Die! [He utters a terrible cry, while CHANTECLER, avoiding the blow, springs aside.] Ah! [He drops to the ground. Cry of amazement.]
SEVERAL VOICES What is it?
THE BLACKBIRD [Who has hopped up to the fallen COCK and examined him.] Nothing! Merely he has dexterously slashed his left claw with his right!
THE CROWD [Following and hooting the WHITE PILE, who, having picked himself up, limps off.] Hoo! Hoo!
PATOU and the PHEASANT-HEN [Laughing and weeping and talking, all in one, beside CHANTECLER, who stands motionless, utterly spent, with closed eyes.] Chantecler! It is we! The Pheasant-hen! The Dog! Speak to us, speak!
CHANTECLER [Opening his eyes, looks at them and says gently.] The day will rise to-morrow!
SCENE SIXTH
THE SAME, except the WHITE PILE
THE CROWD [After seeing the WHITE PILE off, return tumultuously to CHANTECLER, hailing him with acclamations.] Hurrah!
CHANTECLER [Drawing away from them, in a terrible voice.] Stand back! I know your worth! [The crowd hastily draws back.]
THE PHEASANT-HEN [Close by his side.] Come away to the woods, where true-hearted animals live!
CHANTECLER No, I will stay here.
THE PHEASANT-HEN After finding them out?
CHANTECLER After finding them out.
THE PHEASANT-HEN You will stay here?
CHANTECLER Not for their sakes, but the sake of my song. It might spring forth less clear from any other soil! But now, to inform the Day that it is sure to be called tomorrow I will sing! [Obsequious movement of the crowd, attempting to approach.] Back! All of you! I have nothing left but my song! [ALL draw away, and alone in his pride, he begins.] Co—[To himself, stiffening himself against pain.] Nothing left but my song, therefore let us sing well! [He tries again.] Co—Now, I wonder, shall I take it as a chest-note, or—Co—a head-note? Shall I count one-three, or—Co—And the accent? Since they filled my head with all that sort of thing, I—Coocooroo—Keekee-ree—And the theory? The dynamic theory? Cock-a—I am all tangled up in schools and rules and rubbish! If he reduced his flight to a theory, what eagle would ever soar? Co—[Trying again, and ending in a raucous, abortive crow.] Co—I cannot sing any more, I, whose method was not to know how, but be quite certain why! [In a cry, of despair.] I have nothing left! They have taken everything from me, my song and everything else. How shall I get it back? |
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