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.