Chantecler | Page 7

my head and under my eye is a far more gorgeous red, when I puff out my chest and strut, than any robin's waistcoat or finch's tie.--A fine day. All is well. I curvet--I blow my horn. Conscious of having done my duty, I may quite properly assume the swagger of a musketeer, and the calm commanding bearing of a cardinal. I can--
A VOICE [Loud and gruff.] Beware, Chantecler!
CHANTECLER What silly beast is bidding me beware?

SCENE FOURTH
THE SAME, PATOU.
PATOU [Barking inside his kennel.] I! I! I!
CHANTECLER [Retreating.] Is it you, Patou, good shaggy head starting out of the dark, with straws caught among your eyelashes?
PATOU Which do not prevent my seeing what is plain as that hen-house rrrroof!
CHANTECLER Cross?
PATOU Grrrrrrr--
CHANTECLER When he rolls his r's like that he is very cross indeed.
PATOU It's my devotion to you, Cock, makes me roll my r's. Guardian of the house, the orchard and the fields, more than all else I am bound to protect your song. And I growl at the dangers I suspect lurking. Such is my humour.
CHANTECLER Your humour? Your dogma, suspicion is! Call it your dogma!
PATOU You can stoop to a pun? From bad to worse! I'm enough of a psychologist to feel the evil spreading, and I've the scent of a rat-terrier.
CHANTECLER But you are no rat-terrier!
PATOU [Shaking his head.] Chantecler, how do we know?
CHANTECLER [Considering him.] Your appearance is in fact peculiar What actually is your breed?
PATOU I am a horrible mixture, issue of every passer-by! I can feel barking within me the voice of every blood. Retriever, mastiff, pointer, poodle, hound--my soul is a whole pack, sitting in circle, musing. Cock, I am all dogs, I have been every dog!
CHANTECLER Then what a sum of goodness must be stored in you!
PATOU Brother, we are framed to understand each other. You sing to the sun and scratch up the earth. I, when I wish to do myself a good and a pleasure--
CHANTECLER You lie on the earth and sleep in the sun!
PATOU [With a pleased yap.] Aye!
CHANTECLER We have ever had in common our love for those two things.
PATOU I am so fond of the sun that I howl at the moon. And so fond of the earth that I dig great holes and shove my nose in it!
CHANTECLER I know! The gardener's wife has her opinion of those holes.--But what are the dangers you discern? All lies quiet beneath the quiet sky. Nothing appears to be threatening my humble sunlit dominions.
THE OLD HEN [Lifting the basket-lid with her head.] The egg looks like marble until it gets smashed! [The lid drops.]
CHANTECLER [To PATOU.] What dangers, friend?
PATOU There are two. First, in yonder cage--
CHANTECLER Well?
PATOU That satirical whistling.
CHANTECLER What about it?
PATOU Pernicious.
CHANTECLER In what way?
PATOU In every way!
CHANTECLER [Ironical.] Bad as all that, is it? [The PEACOCK'S _squall is heard in the distance: "Ee--yong!"_]
PATOU And then that cry, the Peacock's!
[The PEACOCK, further off: "Ee--yong!"]
PATOU More out of tune all by itself than a whole village singing society!
CHANTECLER Come, what have they done to you, that whistler and that posturer?
PATOU [Grumbling.] They have done to me--that I know not what they may do to you! They have done to me--that among us simple, kindly folk they have introduced new fashions, the Blackbird of being funny, the Peacock of putting on airs! Fashions which the latter in his grotesque bad taste picked up parading on the marble terraces of the vulgar rich, and the former--Heaven knows where! along with his cynicism and his slang. Now the one, travelling salesman of blighting corrosive laughter, and the other, brainless ambassador of Fashion, their mission to kill among us love and labour, the first by persiflage, the second by display,--they have brought to us, even here in our peaceful sunny corner, the two pests, the saddest in the world, the jest which insists on being funny at any cost, and the cry which insists on being the latest scream! [_The BLACKBIRD is heard tentatively whistling, "How sweet to fare afield"._] You, Cock, who had the sense to prefer the grain of true wheat to the pearl, how can you allow yourself to be taken in by that villainous Blackbird! A bird who practises a tune!
CHANTECLER [Indulgently.] Come, he whistles his tune like many another!
PATOU [Unwillingly agreeing, in a drawling growl.] Ye-e-es, but he never whistles it to the end!
CHANTECLER [Watching the BLACKBIRD hopping about.] A light-hearted fellow!
PATOU [Same business.] Ye-e-es, but he lies heavy on our hearts. A bird who takes his exercise indoors!
CHANTECLER You must own he is intelligent!
PATOU [In a longer, more hesitant growl.] Ye-e-e-es! But not so very! For his eye never brightens with wonder and admiration. He preserves before the flower--of whose stalk he sees more than of its chalice--the glance which deflowers, the tone which depreciates!
CHANTECLER Taste, my