“But very real to us. What we depict is merely what we have known or seen or felt. All our lives we are moving in different scenes and different places—we are rubbing shoulders week by week with different men, different women, and human events, both great and small, which even you, with your battle-field experiences, would find it hard to outrival.”
Raeburn made no reply, but the angle of his nostrils was distinctly sceptical.
“Yes, all the time we are drawing our experiences—learning our lesson from the book of life. A child pricks its finger—and we can study from the child’s mother the measure of sympathy she offers for so small a sorrow, yes, and deduce therefrom how great her sympathy and concern would be if the pricked finger were, instead, a mortal malady. There is no happening too small to be of use to us, to help us with our lesson; and every hour of the day or night we are piecing together the minute mosaic which goes to fashion the broad patterns of our art.”
“H’m! That’s all very nice and very interesting, but forgive me if I don’t exactly see what it’s leading up to.”
“Merely this: that from the lesson we have learnt, we, of all people, are to be relied upon to do the right thing in any emergency.”
Captain Raeburn found the loophole he had been seeking, and fired his shaft unceremoniously.
“Then why, my dear sir, play that last scene in ‘The Flag’ in the manner you do? Surely you don’t imagine a Colonel would really behave like that under similar conditions?”
“Although I have never been in a battle, I can see no reason against his doing so.”
“You can take it from me that he wouldn’t.”
“At the risk of appearing disputatious, I contend, if it were his wish to allay a spirit of panic, that is precisely the way he would set about it.”