A worse thorn in her flesh than Roger, however, was Mr Shortreed. George, or as he preferred to be called, Geordie Shortreed, was a steward in the government liquor store and in that capacity was acquainted with all the gentle and simple of Salterton. He knew who drank wine, who drank imported Scotch, who drank the cheaper liquors, and who bought good stuff for themselves and what he called belly-vengeance for their guests. He had a large bass voice and a monkey-like physique which had persuaded Valentine to cast him as Caliban. Because Caliban is a large and important part, and one which was coveted by several other actors in the Little Theatre, it was thought that in casting a man who was, in essence, a bartender for it the Little Theatre had behaved in a commendably democratic way. Canadians are, of course, naturally democratic, but when they give some signal evidence of this quality in the social life they like to get full marks for it. Everybody had, therefore, been a little nicer to Geordie than was strictly required, nicer, that is to say, than they would have been to someone who was an unquestioned social equal. Geordie, however, refused to play this game according to the rules. Instead of being quietly grateful for the friendliness of professors and business men who always bought the best Scotch, he was rather noisily familiar with them, and revealed himself as a practical joker. A great patron of joke-shops, he had a large collection of ice-cubes in which a fly was imprisoned, of cigarette-cases with springing surprises in them, of rubber snakes, of cameras which squirted when they were supposed to be taking pictures. He proved to be the kind of actor whose delight it was to discompose those who were on the stage with him; to make them laugh, if possible. Valentine rebuked him for this twice and each time he allowed his great voice to drop to a rumbling whisper as he said: “I know, Miss Rich; I oughtn’t to do it, and that’s a fact; don’t imagine I don’t realize what a privilege it is for the bunch and I to work with a real artist of the theatre like yourself; I guess it’s just that it’s so wonderful that makes me carry on like that; but it won’t happen again, I assure you.” But it did happen again.
It could not be denied that Mr Shortreed’s knowledge of the text of the play was richer and more curious than that of anyone else. Like Professor Vambrace, he knew it by heart from start to finish. But whereas the Professor showed off his knowledge only by prompting a little ahead of the official prompter, Geordie delighted in perverting lines to unexpected uses in private conversation. Like many great wits of the past, he planned his effects carefully at home, and then sprang them as impromptus at rehearsals. He was the kind of actor, too, who loved to address people offstage by the name of the character which they played on. Thus he never approached Hector Mackilwraith without roaring “Holy Gonzalo, honourable man!” except on the day when Hector, hoping to show himself youthful in the eyes of Griselda, appeared in a new and too gay sports shirt, when Geordie struck his brow and cried “What a pied ninny’s this!”
Hector did not like this last sally, but upon the whole he admired Shortreed’s wit and envied it, for it often raised a laugh. If only he could be distinguished in that way! Something deep inside him told him that Shortreed’s jokes were stupid and overstrained, but his new craving to be a social success was silencing that inner voice which had kept him, for forty years, from making the more obvious kind of fool of himself. He too studied his text of the play in private, seeking lines which he might twist into a retort upon Shortreed, but his mind was ill-suited to such work, and he found little. He had to content himself with pretending to shrink from Shortreed, saying, “Don’t you come near me; you’re a demi-devil,” but he knew that this was pitiful. Indeed, he became conscious for the first time of a certain thinness in his intellectual equipment which he had not noticed before.
Hector had a certain reputation as a wit, among the students of the Salterton Collegiate Institute and Vocational School. This was founded upon his occasional sarcasms and upon one joke, which he had brought to birth eight years before, and which had become a tradition in the institution. It had happened thus: one warm June afternoon Hector was supervising a gymnasium filled with students who were writing an examination; a boy had raised his hand, and said, in an offhand voice, “Sir, do you know the time?”; Hector, with his dark smile, took out his watch, looked at it, returned it to his pocket and said, “Yes.” What a shout of laughter there had been! And how the tale flew around the school! Young Porson, you see, had asked Mackilwraith if he knew the time; not if he’d tell him the time, you see; just if he knew it. And Mackilwraith had just said Yes, you see, with a perfectly straight face, because he did, you see, but he didn’t say what the time was, because that wasn’t what he’d been asked, you see?
In the great days of the Italian Comedy certain gifted actors prepared and polished special monologues, or acrobatic feats, or passages of mime, which became peculiarly their own, and these specialties were called lazzi. This witty interchange about the time became Hector’s lazzo, and at least once a year some boy would play straight man, or stooge, to him, in order that this masterstroke of wit should be demonstrated anew. Time did not appear to wither, nor custom stale it. Thus when Hector found himself pitted against a man like Shortreed, whose jokes changed from day to day, he found himself at an unexpected disadvantage.
Geordie’s career as a humorist, though meteoric, was short-lived. Like many another man before him, his fall was brought about by the sheer, inexplicable malignancy of fate.
There lived at St Agnes’, under Tom’s special care, an ancient horse called Old Bill, whose work it was to pull the large lawn-mower. Both Tom and Mr Webster were agreed that motor-mowers were instruments of Satan, designed to chew up and deface fine turf; the lawns, therefore, were mowed by a simple but very sharp mechanism which Old Bill dragged slowly behind him; for this work Old Bill wore a straw hat to protect his head from the sun, and curious leathern goloshes over his steel shoes, so that he would not cut the lawns. Dressed for work Old Bill was a venerable and endearing sight, and during rehearsals he became a favourite with the cast. They petted him and brought him sugar.
One afternoon Tom was cutting grass at some distance from the stage, when he became dissatisfied with the edge on one of the blades of the mower, and decided to touch it up. He left Old Bill under a tree and went off to The Shed for a file. Mr Shortreed, observing this, had a really great comic inspiration; he had a cue coming soon, and he would enter on Old Bill. Miss Rich wouldn’t like it, of course, but surely when she saw what a laugh the bunch got out of it she wouldn’t mind too much. Anyway, he hadn’t time to worry about that, and he would chance his luck. Yes, there was old Vambrace yelling out his cue—