Thus, as the days went by, at Raylesbury and the succeeding Assize towns, drama after drama was unfolded, and varieties of character revealed—knaves guileless and knaves quickwitted; fools without balance or self-restraint; mere animals—or such they seemed—doing animal deeds and confronted with a human standard to which they were not equal and which they regarded with a dull dismay. Incidentally there came to light ways of life and modes of thought astonishing, yet plainly accepted and related as things normal; the old hands on the circuit knew all about them and used their knowledge deftly in cross-examination. Now and then the dock was filled by a figure that seemed strange to it, by a denizen of the same world that Bench and Bar, High Sheriff and Marshal inhabited; in one place there was a solicitor who had been town-clerk and embezzled public moneys; in another a local magistrate stood to plead in the dock side by side with a labourer whom he himself had committed for trial; the labourer was acquitted, and the magistrate sent to prison—with nought to seek thence-forward but oblivion. Freaks of destiny and whirligigs of fortune! Yet these were the exception. The salient revelation was of a great world of people to whom there was nothing strange in finding themselves, their relatives or friends, in that dock, to whom it was an accident that might well happen to anybody, an incident in many a career. But they expected the game to be played; they were keen on that, and bitterly resented any sharp practice by the police; a "fair cop," on the other hand, begat no resentment. Lack of consideration as between man and man, however, stirred ire. One fellow's great grievance was that a zealous officer had arrested him at seven o'clock on a Sunday morning. "Why couldn't 'e let me 'ave my Sunday sleep out?" he demanded. "A bloke's not going to do a bunk at seven on a Sunday morning!" His lordship smilingly assured him that he should have seven days less in prison, but he was not appeased. "Seven of a Sunday, my lordship!" he growled still, in disappearing.
"Well, I shouldn't like it myself," said "my lordship" aside to the Marshal.
His lordship's "asides" added something to the Marshal's instruction and more to his amusement. Sir Christopher was not a reformer or a sociologist, nor even an emotionalist either. He took this Assize Court world as he found it, just as he took West-End drawing-rooms as he found them, at other times of the year. He knew the standards. He was never shocked, and nothing made him angry, except cruelty or a Jack-in-office. In presence of these he was coldly dangerous and deadly. To see him take in hand a policeman whose zeal outran the truth was a lesson in the art of flaying a man's skin off him strip by strip. The asides came often then; the artist would have the pupil note his skill and did not disdain his applause. Though the Marshal's share in the work of the court was of the smallest, his lordship liked him to be there, hearing the cases and qualifying himself for a gossip over them, on an afternoon walk or at dinner in the evening.
As the days went by, a pleasant intimacy between the old man and the young established itself, and grew into a mutual affection, quasi-paternal on the one side, almost filial on the other. A bachelor, without near kindred save an elderly maiden sister, the old Judge found in Arthur something of what a son gives his father—a vicarious and yet personal interest in the years to come—and he found amusement in discovering likenesses between himself and his protégé, or at least in speculating on their existence with a playful humour.
"Men differ in the way they look at their professions or businesses," he said. "Of course everybody's got to live, but, going deeper into it than that, you find one man to whom his profession is, first and foremost, a ladder, and another to whom it's a seat in the theatre—if you follow what I mean. That fellow Norton Ward's of the first class. He's never looking about him; his eyes are always turned upwards, towards an inspiring vision of himself at the top. But you and I like looking about us; we're not in a hurry to be always on the upward move. The scene delights us, even though we've no part in it, or only a small one. That's been true about me, and I think it's true about you, Arthur."
"Oh, I've my ambitions, sir," laughed Arthur. "Fits of ambition, anyhow."
"Fits and starts? That's rather it, I fancy. You probably won't go as far as Norton Ward in a professional way, but you may very likely make just as much mark on life really, besides enjoying it more; I mean in a richer broader way. Purely professional success—and I include politics as well as the law, because they're equally a profession to men like our friend—is rather a narrow thing. The man with more interests—the more human man—spreads himself wider and is more felt really; he gets remembered more too."
"The Idle Man's Apologia! Very ingenious!" said Arthur, smiling.
"No, no, you shan't put that on me. It's perfectly true. The greatest characters—I mean characters, not intellects—are by no means generally in the highest places; because, as I say, to climb up there you have to specialise too much. You have to lop off the branches to make the trunk grow. But I don't see you like that. The Burlington Theatre was hardly in the direct line of ascent, was it?"
"I shan't be quite such a fool as that again, sir."