CHAPTER VI
One learns to be modest by living on a poultry farm, for there areconstant expositions of the most deplorable vanity among the cocks. Wehave a couple of pea-fowl who certainly are an addition to the landscape,as they step mincingly along the square of turf we dignify by the name oflawn. The head of the house has a most languid and self-conscious strut,and his microscopic mind is fixed entirely on his splendid trailing tail.If I could only master his language sufficiently to tell him howhideously ugly the back view of this gorgeous fan is, when he spreads itfor the edification of the observer in front of him, he would of courseretort that there is a "congregation side" to everything, but I should atleast force him into a defence of his tail and a confession of itslimitations. This would be new and unpleasant, I fancy; and if itproduced no perceptible effect upon his super-arrogant demeanour, I mightremind him that he is likely to be used, eventually, for a featherduster, unless, indeed, the Heavens are superstitious and prefer to throwhis tail away, rather than bring ill luck and the evil eye into thehouse.
{More pride of bearing, and less to be proud of: p43.jpg}
The longer I study the cock, whether Black Spanish, White Leghorn,Dorking, or the common barnyard fowl, the more intimately I am acquaintedwith him, the less I am impressed with his character. He has more prideof bearing, and less to be proud of, than any bird I know. He isindolent, though he struts pompously over the grass as if the day wereall too short for his onerous duties. He calls the hens about him when Ithrow corn from the basket, but many a time I have seen him swallowhurriedly, and in private, some dainty titbit he has found unexpectedly.He has no particular chivalry. He gives no special encouragement to hishen when he becomes a prospective father, and renders little assistancewhen the responsibilities become actualities. His only personal messageor contribution to the world is his raucous cock-a-doodle-doo, which,being uttered most frequently at dawn, is the most ill-timed andoffensive of all musical notes. It is so unnecessary too, as if the daydidn't come soon enough without his warning; but I suppose he is anxiousto waken his hens and get them at their daily task, and so he disturbsthe entire community. In short, I dislike him; his swagger, hisautocratic strut, his greed, his irritating self-consciousness, hisendless parading of himself up and down in a procession of one.
Of course his character is largely the result of polygamy. Hisweaknesses are only what might be expected; and as for the hens, I haveconsiderable respect for the patience, sobriety, and dignity with whichthey endure an institution particularly offensive to all women. In theircase they do not even have the sustaining thought of its being an articleof religion, so they are to be complimented the more.
There is nothing on earth so feminine as a hen--not womanly, simplyfeminine. Those men of insight who write the Woman's Page in the Sundaynewspapers study hens more than women, I sometimes think; at any rate,their favourite types are all present on this poultry farm.
Some families of White Leghorns spend most of their time in the rickyard,where they look extremely pretty, their slender white shapes and redcombs and wattles well set off by the background of golden hayricks.There is a great oak-tree in one corner, with a tall ladder leaningagainst its trunk, and a capital roosting-place on a long branch runningat right angles with the ladder. I try to spend a quarter of an hourthere every night before supper, just for the pleasure of seeing thefeathered "women-folks" mount that ladder.
A dozen of them surround the foot, waiting restlessly for their turn. Onelittle white lady flutters up on the lowest round and perches there untilshe reviews the past, faces the present, and forecasts the future; duringwhich time she is gathering courage for the next jump. She cackles,takes up one foot and then the other, tilts back and forth, holds up herskirts and drops them again, cocks her head nervously to see whether theyare all staring at her below, gives half a dozen preliminary springswhich mean nothing, declares she can't and won't go up any faster, untiesher bonnet strings and pushes back her hair, pulls down her dress tocover her toes, and finally alights on the next round, swaying to and frountil she gains her equilibrium, when she proceeds to enact the samescene over again.
All this time the hens at the foot of the ladder are criticising hermethods and exclaiming at the length of time she requires in mounting;while the cocks stroll about the yard keeping one eye on the ladder,picking up a seed here and there, and giving a masculine sneer now andthen at the too-familiar scene. They approach the party at intervals,but only to remark that it always makes a man laugh to see a woman go upa ladder. The next hen, stirred to the depths by this speech, flies upentirely too fast, loses her head, tumbles off the top round, and has tomake the ascent over again. Thus it goes on and on, this _petite comediehumaine_, and I could enjoy it with my whole heart if Mr. Heaven did notinsist on sharing the spectacle with me. He is so inexpressibly dull, sodestitute of humour, that I did not think it likely he would see in theperformance anything more than a flock of hens going up a ladder toroost. But he did; for there is no man so blind that he cannot see thefollies of women; and, when he forgot himself so far as to utter a fewgenial, silly, well-worn reflections upon femininity at large, I turnedupon him and revealed to him some of the characteristics of his own sex,gained from an exhaustive study of the barnyard fowl of the masculinegender. He went into the house discomfited, though chuckling a little atmy vehemence; but at least I have made it for ever impossible for him towatch his hens without an occasional glance at the cocks.
{Mr. Heaven discomfited: p46.jpg}