Scarhaven Keep

MP3 Audio CD. Scarhaven Keep

CHAPTER I

WANTED AT REHEARSAL


Jerramy, thirty years' stage-door keeper at the Theatre Royal, Norcaster,
had come to regard each successive Monday morning as a time for the
renewal of old acquaintance. For at any rate forty-six weeks of the
fifty-two, theatrical companies came and went at Norcaster with unfailing
regularity. The company which presented itself for patronage in the first
week of April in one year was almost certain to present itself again in
the corresponding week of the next year. Sometimes new faces came with
it, but as a rule the same old favourites showed themselves for a good
many years in succession. And every actor and actress who came to
Norcaster knew Jerramy. He was the first official person encountered on
entering upon the business of the week. He it was who handed out the
little bundles of letters and papers, who exchanged the first greetings,
of whom one could make useful inquiries, who always knew exactly what
advice to give about lodgings and landladies. From noon onwards of
Mondays, when the newcomers began to arrive at the theatre for the
customary one o'clock call for rehearsal, Jerramy was invariably employed
in hearing that he didn't look a day older, and was as blooming as ever,
and sure to last another thirty years, and his reception always
culminated in a hearty handshake and genial greeting from the great man
of the company, who, of course, after the fashion of magnates, always
turned up at the end of the irregular procession, and was not seldom late
for the fixture which he himself had made.