Utterly selfish, he would keep all dainty bits for himself, leaving the scraps for his devoted mate, who would wait meekly to eat what he chose to leave. She made up for this wifely self-abnegation by frequenting the hen houses. She would watch patiently by the side of a hen on her nest, and as soon as an egg was deposited, would remove it for her luncheon. She liked raw eggs, and six were her usual limit.
There is a deal of something closely akin to human nature in barn-yard fowls. It was irresistibly ludicrous to see the peacock strutting about in the sunshine, his tail expanded in fullest glory, making a curious rattle of triumph as he paraded, while my large white Holland turkey gobbler, who had been molting severely and was almost denuded as to tail feathers, would attempt to emulate his display, and would follow him closely, his wattles swelling and reddening with fancied success, making all this fuss about what had been a fine array, but now was reduced to five scrubby, ragged, very dirty remnants of feathers. He fancied himself equally fine, and was therefore equally happy.
Next came the molting period.
Pliny said long ago of the peacock: “When he hath lost his taile, he hath no delight to come abroad,” but I knew nothing of this peculiarity, supposing that a peacock’s tail, once grown, was a permanent ornament. On the contrary, if a peacock should live one hundred and twenty years (and his longevity is something phenomenal) he would have one hundred and seventeen new and interesting tails—enough to start a circulating library. Yes, Beauty’s pride and mine had a sad fall as one by one the long plumes were dropped in road and field and garden. He should have been caught and confined, and the feathers, all loose at once, should have been pulled out at one big pull and saved intact for fans and dust brushes, and adornment of mirrors and fire-places. Soon every one was gone, and the mortified creature now hid away in the corn, and behind shrubbery, disappearing entirely from view, save as hunger necessitated a brief emerging.
This tailless absentee was not what I had bought as the champion prize winner. And Belle, after laying four eggs, refused to set. But I put them under a turkey, and, to console myself and re-enforce my position as an owner of peacocks, I began to study peacock lore and literature. I read once more of the throne of the greatest of all the moguls at Delhi, India.
“The under part of the canopy is embroidered with pearls and diamonds, with a fringe of pearls round about. On the top of the canopy, which is made like an arch with four panes, stands a peacock with his tail spread, consisting all of sapphires and other proper-colored stones; the body is of beaten gold enchased with several jewels, and a great ruby upon his breast, at which hangs a pearl that weighs fifty carats. On each side of the peacock stand two nosegays as high as the bird, consisting of several sorts of flowers, all of beaten gold enameled. When the king seats himself upon the throne, there is a transparent jewel with a diamond appendant, of eighty or ninety carats, encompassed with rubies and emeralds, so hung that it is always in his eye. The twelve pillars also that support the canopy are set with rows of fair pearls, round, and of an excellent water, that weigh from six to ten carats apiece. At the distance of four feet upon each side of the throne are placed two parasols or umbrellas, the handles whereof are about eight feet high, covered with diamonds; the parasols themselves are of crimson velvet, embroidered and stringed with pearls.” This is the famous throne which Tamerlane began and Shah Jahan finished, which is really reported to have cost a hundred and sixty million five hundred thousand livres (thirty-two million one hundred thousand dollars).
I also gloated over the description of that famous London dining-room, known to the art world as the “Peacock Room,” designed by Whistler. Panels to the right and left represent peacocks with their tails spread fan-wise, advancing in perspective toward the spectator, one behind the other, the peacocks in gold and the ground in blue.
I could not go so extensively into interior decoration, and my mania for making the outside of the house and the grounds highly decorative had received a severe lesson in the verdict, overheard by me, as I stood in the garden, made by a gawky country couple who were out for a Sunday drive.
As Warner once said to me, “young love in the country is a very solemn thing,” and this shy, serious pair slowed up as they passed, to see my place. The piazza was gay with hanging baskets, vines, strings of beads and bells, lanterns of all hues; there were tables, little and big, and lounging chairs and a hammock and two canaries. The brightest geraniums blossomed in small beds through the grass, and several long flower beds were one brilliant mass of bloom, while giant sun-flowers reared their golden heads the entire length of the farm.
It was gay, but I had hoped to please Beauty.