Again the bird lifted its crested head and gave a cry, at the same time turning awkwardly on its ugly legs, so that it showed us the full wealth of its tail glimmering like a stream of coloured stars over the sunken face of the angel.
“The proud fool!—look at it! Perched on an angel, too, as if it were a pedestal for vanity. That’s the soul of a woman—or it’s the devil.”
He was silent for a time, and we watched the great bird moving uneasily before us in the twilight.
“That’s the very soul of a lady,” he said, “the very, very soul. Damn the thing, to perch on that old angel. I should like to wring its neck.”
Again the bird screamed, and shifted awkwardly on its legs; it seemed to stretch its beak at us in derision. Annable picked up a piece of sod and flung it at the bird, saying:
“Get out, you screeching devil! God!” he laughed. “There must be plenty of hearts twisting under here,”—and he stamped on a grave, “when they hear that row.”
He kicked another sod from a grave and threw at the big bird. The peacock flapped away, over the tombs, down the terraces.
“Just look!” he said, “the miserable brute has dirtied that angel. A woman to the end, I tell you, all vanity and screech and defilement.”
He sat down on a vault and lit his pipe. But before he had smoked two minutes, it was out again. I had not seen him in a state of perturbation before.
“The church,” said I, “is rotten. I suppose they’ll stand all over the country like this, soon—with peacocks trailing the graveyards.”
