Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and PG
Distributed Proofreaders
1922
Jerramy, thirty years' stage-door keeper at the Theatre Royal, Norcaster,had come to regard each successive Monday morning as a time for therenewal of old acquaintance. For at any rate forty-six weeks of thefifty-two, theatrical companies came and went at Norcaster with unfailingregularity. The company which presented itself for patronage in the firstweek of April in one year was almost certain to present itself again inthe corresponding week of the next year. Sometimes new faces came withit, but as a rule the same old favourites showed themselves for a goodmany years in succession. And every actor and actress who came toNorcaster knew Jerramy. He was the first official person encountered onentering upon the business of the week. He it was who handed out thelittle bundles of letters and papers, who exchanged the first greetings,of whom one could make useful inquiries, who always knew exactly whatadvice to give about lodgings and landladies. From noon onwards ofMondays, when the newcomers began to arrive at the theatre for thecustomary one o'clock call for rehearsal, Jerramy was invariably employedin 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 alwaysculminated in a hearty handshake and genial greeting from the great manof the company, who, of course, after the fashion of magnates, alwaysturned up at the end of the irregular procession, and was not seldom latefor the fixture which he himself had made.
At a quarter past one of a certain Monday afternoon in the course of asunny October, Jerramy leaned over the half-door of his sanctum inconversation with an anxious-eyed man who for the past ten minutes hadhung about in the restless fashion peculiar to those who are waiting forsomebody. He had looked up the street and down the street a dozen times;he had pulled out his watch and compared it with the clock of aneighbouring church almost as often; he had several times gone up thedark passage which led to the dressing-rooms, and had come back againlooking more perplexed than ever. The fact was that he was the businessmanager of the great Mr. Bassett Oliver, who was opening for the week atNorcaster in his latest success, and who, not quite satisfied with theway in which a particular bit of it was being played called a specialrehearsal for a quarter to one. Every