_ CHAPTER III. THE ART OF THE ORIENT
"Come," said Orme to me, "let us go into the shade, for I find your Virginia morning warm."
We stepped over to the gallery of the little tavern, where the shade was deep and the chairs were wide and the honeysuckles sweet. I threw myself rather discontentedly into a chair. Orme seated himself quietly in another, his slender legs crossed easily, his hands meeting above his elbows supported on the chair rails, as he gazed somewhat meditatively at his finger tips.
"So you did not hear my little effort the other night?" he remarked, smiling.
"I was not so fortunate as to hear you speak. But I will only say I will back you against any minister of the gospel I ever knew when it comes to riding horses."
"Oh, well," he deprecated, "I'm just passing through on my way to Albemarle County across the mountains. You couldn't blame me for wanting something to do--speaking or riding, or what not. One must be occupied, you know. But shall we not have them bring us one of these juleps of the country? I find them most agreeable, I declare."
I did not criticise his conduct as a wearer of the cloth, but declined his hospitality on the ground that it was early in the day for me. He urged me so little and was so much the gentleman that I explained.
"Awhile ago," I said, "my father came to me and said, 'I see, Jack, that thee is trying to do three things--to farm, hunt foxes, and drink juleps. Does thee think thee can handle all three of these activities in combination?' You see, my mother is a Quakeress, and when my father wished to reprove me he uses the plain speech. Well, sir, I thought it over, and for the most part I dropped the other two, and took up more farming."
"Your father is Mr. John Cowles, of Cowles' Farms?"
"The same."
"No doubt your family know every one in this part of the country?"
"Oh, yes, very well."
"These are troublous times," he ventured, after a time. "I mean in regard to this talk of secession of the Southern States."
I was studying this man. What was he doing here in our quiet country community? What was his errand? What business had a julep-drinking, horse-riding parson speaking in a Virginia pulpit where only the gospel was known, and that from exponents worth the name?
"You are from Washington?" I said at length.
He nodded.
"The country is going into deep water one way or the other," said I. "Virginia is going to divide on slavery. It is not for me, nor for any of us, to hasten that time. Trouble will come fast enough without our help."
"I infer you did not wholly approve of my little effort the other evening. I was simply looking at the matter from a logical standpoint. It is perfectly clear that the old world must have cotton, that the Southern States must supply that cotton, and that slavery alone makes cotton possible for the world. It is a question of geography rather than of politics; yet your Northern men make it a question of politics. Your Congress is full of rotten tariff legislation, which will make a few of your Northern men rich--and which will bring on this war quite as much as anything the South may do. Moreover, this tariff disgusts England, very naturally. Where will England side when the break comes? And what will be the result when the South, plus England, fights these tariff makers over here? I have no doubt that you, sir, know the complexion of all these neighborhood families in these matters. I should be most happy if you could find it possible for me to meet your father and his neighbors, for in truth I am interested in these matters, merely as a student. And I have heard much of the kindness of this country toward strangers."
It was not our way in Virginia to allow persons of any breeding to put up at public taverns. We took them to our homes. I have seen a hundred horses around my father's barns during the Quarterly Meetings of the Society of Friends. Perhaps we did not scrutinize all our guests over-closely, but that was the way of the place. I had no hesitation in saying to Mr. Orme that we should be glad to entertain him at Cowles' Farms. He was just beginning to thank me for this when we were suddenly interrupted.
We were sitting some paces from the room where landlord Sanderson kept his bar, so that we heard only occasionally the sound of loud talk which came through the windows. But now came footsteps and confused words in voices, one of which I seemed to know. There staggered through the door a friend of mine, Harry Singleton, a young planter of our neighborhood, who had not taken my father's advice, but continued to divide his favor between farming, hunting and drinking. He stood there leaning against the wall, his face more flushed than one likes to see a friend's face before midday.
"Hullo, ol' fel," he croaked at me. "Hurrah for C'fedrate States of America!"
"Very well," I said to him, "suppose we do hurrah for the Confederate States of America. But let us wait until there is such a thing."
He glowered at me. "Also," he said, solemnly, "Hurrah for Miss Grace Sheraton, the pretties' girl in whole C'federate States America!"
"Harry," I cried, "stop! You're drunk, man. Come on, I'll take you home."
He waved at me an uncertain hand. "Go 'way, slight man!" he muttered. "Grace Sheraton pretties' girl in whole C'federate States America."
According to our creed it was not permissible for a gentleman, drunk or sober, to mention a lady's name in a place like that. I rose and put my hand across Harry's mouth, unwilling that a stranger should hear a girl's name mentioned in the place. No doubt I should have done quite as much for any girl of our country whose name came up in that way. But to my surprise Harry Singleton was just sufficiently intoxicated to resent the act of his best friend. With no word of warning he drew back his hand and struck me in the face with all his force, the blow making a smart crack which brought all the others running from within. Still, I reflected, that this was not the act of Harry Singleton, but only that of a drunken man who to-morrow would not remember what had been done.
"That will be quite enough, Harry," said I. "Come, now, I'll take you home. Sanderson, go get his horse or wagon, or whatever brought him here."
"Not home!" cried Harry. "First inflict punishment on you for denyin' Miss Gracie Sheraton pretties' girl whole C'fedrate States America. Girls like John Cowles too much! Must mash John Cowles! Must mash John Cowles sake of Gracie Sheraton, pretties' girl in whole wide worl'!"
He came toward me as best he might, his hands clenched. I caught him by the wrist, and as he stumbled past, I turned and had his arm over my shoulder. I admit I threw him rather cruelly hard, for I thought he needed it. He was entirely quiet when we carried him into the room and placed him on the leather lounge.
"By Jove!" I heard a voice at my elbow. "That was handsomely done--handsomely done all around."
I turned to meet the outstretched hand of my new friend, Gordon Orme.
"Where did you learn the trick?" he asked.
"The trick of being a gentleman," I answered him slowly, my face red with anger at Singleton's foolishness, "I never learned at all. But to toss a poor drunken fool like that over one's head any boy might learn at school."
"No," said my quasi-minister of the gospel, emphatically, "I differ with you. Your time was perfect. You made him do the work, not yourself. Tell me, are you a skilled wrestler?"
I was nettled now at all these things which were coming to puzzle and perturb an honest fellow out for a morning ride.
"Yes," I answered him, "since you are anxious to know, I'll say I can throw any man in Fairfax except one."
"And he?"
"My father. He's sixty, as I told you, but he can always beat me."
"There are two in Fairfax you cannot throw," said Orme, smiling.
My blood was up just enough to resent this challenge. There came to me what old Dr. Hallowell at Alexandria calls the "
gaudium certaminis." In a moment I was little more than a full-blooded fighting animal, and had forgotten all the influences of my Quaker home.
"Sir," I said to him hotly, "I propose taking you home with me. But before I do that, and since you seem to wish it, I am going to lay you on your back here in the road. Frankly, there are some things about you I do not like, and if that will remedy your conceit, I'm going to do it for you--for any sort of wager you like."
"Money against your horse?" he inquired, stripping to his ruffled shirt as he spoke. "A hundred guineas, five hundred?"
"Yes, for the horse," I said. "He's worth ten thousand. But if you've two or three hundred to pay for my soiling the shoulders of your shirt, I'm willing to let the odds stand so."
He smiled at me simply--I swear almost winningly, such was the quality of the man.
"I like you," he said simply. "If all the men of this country resembled you, all the world could not beat it."
I was stripped by this time myself, and so, without pausing to consider the propriety on either side of our meeting in this sudden encounter in a public street, we went at it as though we had made a rendezvous there for that express purpose, with no more hesitation and no more fitness than two game cocks which might fall fighting in a church in case they met there.
Orme came to me with no hurry and no anxiety, light on his feet as a skilled fencer. As he passed he struck for my shoulder, and his grip, although it did not hold, was like the cutting of a hawk's talons. He branded me red with his fingers wherever he touched me, although the stroke of his hand was half tentative rather than aggressive. I went to him with head low, and he caught me at the back of the neck with a stroke like that of a smiting bar; but I flung him off, and so we stepped about, hands extended, waiting for a hold. He grew eager, and allowed me to catch him by the wrist. I drew him toward me, but he braced with his free arm bent against my throat, and the more I pulled, the more I choked. Then by sheer strength I drew his arm over my shoulder as I had that of Harry Singleton. He glided into this as though it had been his own purpose, and true as I speak I think he aided me in throwing him over my head, for he went light as a feather, and fell on his feet when I freed him. I was puzzled not a little, for the like of this I had not seen in all my meetings with good men.
As we stepped about cautiously, seeking to engage again, his eye was fixed on mine curiously, half contemplatively, but utterly without concern or fear of any kind. I never saw an eye like his. It gave me not fear, but horror! The more I encountered him, the more uncanny he appeared. The lock of the arm at the back of the neck, those holds known as the Nelson and the half-Nelson, and the ancient "hip lock," and the ineffectual schoolboy "grapevine"--he would none of things so crude, and slipped out of them like a snake. Continually I felt his hands, and where he touched there was pain--on my forehead, at the edge of the eye sockets, at the sides of my neck, in the middle of my back--whenever we locked and broke I felt pain, and I knew that such assault upon the nerve centers of a man's body might well disable him, no matter how strong he was. But, as for him, he did not breathe the faster. It was system with him. I say, I felt not fear only but a horror of him.
By chance I found myself with both hands on his arms, and I knew that no man could break that hold when once set, for vast strength of forearm and wrist was one of the inheritances of all men of the Cowles family. I drew him steadily to me, pulled his head against my chest, and upended him fair, throwing him this time at length across my shoulder. I was sure I had him then, for he fell on his side. But even as he fell he rose, and I felt a grip like steel on each ankle. Then there was a snake-like bend on his part, and before I had time to think I was on my face. His knees were astride my body, and gradually I felt them pushing my arms up toward my neck. I felt a slight blow on the back of my head, as though by the edge of the hand--light, delicate, gentle, but dreamy in its results. Then I was half conscious of a hand pushing down my head, of another hand reaching for my right wrist. It occurred to me in a distant way that I was about to be beaten, subdued--I, John Cowles!
This had been done, as he had said of my own work with Singleton, as much by the momentum of my own fall as by any great effort on his part. As he had said regarding my own simple trick, the time of this was perfect, though how far more difficult than mine, only those who have wrestled with able men can understand.
For the first time in my life I found myself about to be mastered by another man. Had he been more careful he certainly would have had the victory over me. But the morning was warm, and we had worked for some moments. My man stopped for a moment in his calm pinioning of my arms, and perhaps raised his hand to brush his face or push back his hair. At that moment luck came to my aid. He did not repeat the strange gentle blow at the back of my head--one which I think would have left unconscious a man with a neck less stiff--and as his pressure on my twisted arm relaxed, I suddenly got back my faculties. At once I used my whole body as a spring, and so straightened enough to turn and put my arm power against his own, which was all I wanted.
He laughed when I turned, and with perfect good nature freed my arm and sprang to his feet, bowing with hand upreached to me. His eye had lost its peculiar stare, and shone now with what seemed genuine interest and admiration. He seemed ready to call me a sportsman, and a good rival, and much as I disliked to do so, I was obliged to say as much for him in my own heart.
"By the Lord! sir," he said--with a certain looseness of speech, as it seemed to me, for a minister of the gospel to employ, "you're the first I ever knew to break it."
"'Twas no credit to me," I owned. "You let go your hand. The horse is yours."
"Not in the least," he responded, "not in the least. If I felt I had won him I'd take him, and not leave you feeling as though you had been given a present. But if you like I'll draw my own little wager as well. You're the best man I ever met in any country. By the Lord! man, you broke the hold that I once saw an ex-guardsman killed at Singapore for resisting--broke his arm short off, and he died on the table. I've seen it at Tokio and Nagasaki--why, man, it's the yellow policeman's hold, the secret trick of the Orient. Done in proper time, and the little gentleman is the match of any size, yellow or white."
I did not understand him then, but later I knew that I had for my first time seen the Oriental art of wrestling put in practice. I do not want to meet a master in it again. I shook Orme by the hand.
"If you like to call it a draw," said I, "it would suit me mighty well. You're the best man I ever took off coat to in my life. And I'll never wrestle you again unless"--I fear I blushed a little--"well, unless you want it."
"Game! Game!" he cried, laughing, and dusting off his knees. "I swear you Virginians are fellows after my own heart. But come, I think your friend wants you now."
We turned toward the room where poor Harry was mumbling to himself, and presently I loaded him into the wagon and told the negro man to drive him home.
For myself, I mounted Satan and rode off up the street of Wallingford toward Cowles' Farms with my head dropped in thought; for certainly, when I came to review the incidents of the morning, I had had enough to give me reason for reflection. _