Dr. Kemp

“ During the week in which Ruth had established herself as nurse-in-chief to her mother she had seen him almost daily. Time in a quiet sick-room passes monotonously; events that are unnoticed in hours of well-being and activity here assume proportions of importance; meal-times are looked forward to as a break in the day; the doctor’s visit especially when it is the only one allowed, is an excitement. Dr. Kemp’s visits were short, but the two learned to look for his coming and the sound of his deep, cheery voice, as to their morning’s tonic that would strengthen the whole day. ”

“ He merely smiled, picked up a Marechal Niel that lay on the counter, and said, “Drop this in. It’s my mark; she’ll understand.” So here are Bob’s rose and my apology.
HERBERT KEMP.
She was pale when she turned round to the courteously waiting boy. It was a very cold note, and she put it in her pocket to keep it warm. The rose she showed to Will, and told him the story of the sender.
“Didn’t I tell you,” he cried, when she had finished, “a doctor has the greatest opportunity in the world to be great—and a surgeon comes near it? I say, Miss Ruth, your Dr. Kemp must be a brick. Isn’t he?” ”

“ In the early evening time Doctor Kemp was sitting in his study in the belvedere on the hill overlooking Burdock. It was a pleasant little room, with three windows, north, west, and south, and bookshelves covered with books and scientific publications, and a broad writing-table, and, under the north window, a microscope, glass slips, minute instruments, some cultures, and scattered bottles of reagents. Doctor Kemp's solar lamp was lit, albeit the sky was still bright with the sunset light, and his blinds were up because there was no offence of peering outsiders to require them pulled down. ”

“ Once alone in the room, Hildreth, to my consternation, could talk of nothing else but Penton.
"—to think that he would do such a thing to me, only to think of it!" she cried vehemently, again and again.
"If he believes in freedom for men and women, why was all this necessary? the sordidness of the public clamour? the divorce court?... oh, my poor, dear, sweet, wild poet-boy, you're in for it! Don't you wish you were well out of all this and back in Kansas again?"
"No; I am glad. As long as I am with you I don't care what happens. I love you, Hildreth!" ”

“ Kemp was an important personage in Holmnook and its vicinity. An éclat was his that a country doctor does not usually possess. For he was of gentle blood, being a cadet of an old and wealthy family on the other side of the country, the representative of which hailed him "cousin," and treated him with the intimacy of kinship—the kinship of 1790.
Michael Kemp's youth had been spent away from Holmnook. Doubtless so polite and dignified a gentleman had once aimed at a brighter lot than a rural physician's. Doubtless he had a history, but he kept it to himself. He had never married! ”

“ In 1810, at the Russell Institution, Great Coram Street, Russell Square, London, Kemp began a series of lectures on musical education, in which he advocated the teaching of music in classes and the playing of exercises by pupils in concert. On account of failing health he returned with his wife and family to his native city, and resided there until 1824, with the interruption of a visit to France in 1818–21. He had founded a musical college at Exeter in 1814. A journey to London in April 1824 proved too fatiguing for Kemp, then in a weak state of health, and he died in his lodgings on 22 May. ”

“ Kemp combined shrewdness with his rough humour, and, with a view to extending his reputation and his profits, he announced in 1599 his intention of dancing a morris-dance from London to Norwich. According to a common custom, he ‘put out’ a sum of money before his departure, on condition of receiving thrice the amount on his safe return. He left the lord mayor's dwelling in London on the first Monday in Lent, accompanied by Thomas Slye, ‘taberer,’ William Bee, his servant, and George Sprat, his ‘overseer.’ His route lay through Romford, Chelmsford, Sudbury, Bury, Rockland, and Burford Bridge. ”

“ "The man's become inhuman, I tell you," said Kemp. "I am as sure he will establish a reign of terror—so soon as he has got over the emotions of this escape—as I am sure I am talking to you. Our only chance is to be ahead. He has cut himself off from his kind. His blood be upon his own head." ”

“ After a time I crawled home, took some food and a strong dose of strychnine, and went to sleep in my clothes on my unmade bed. Strychnine is a grand tonic, Kemp, to take the flabbiness out of a man."
"It's the devil," said Kemp. "It's the palaeolithic in a bottle."
"I awoke vastly invigorated and rather irritable. You know?"
"I know the stuff." ”

“ Kemp for ten long minutes? Hand him over; pass him around. I want him; you are only boring him, though you seem to be amusing yourself.”
Kemp’s grave lips twitched at the corners; he was without doubt amused.
“Aren’t you improvising?” he asked. A man need only offer an occasional bumper of a remark to keep the conversation from flagging, when his companion is a woman.
“No; you evidently do not know what a feminine sneer is in words. Ah, here comes the Queen of Sheba.” She broke off with a pleased smile as Ruth Levice approached on the arm of her cousin, Louis Arnold. ”

“ Crewe. You've got to stop this here spying. Stop it at once, do you understand? For if you don't, by God, I'll deal with you so that you'll do no more spying in this world! And I'd have you and your master know that I'm a man what means what he says." Mr. Kemp shook his fist angrily at Joe as he moved away to the door of the loft after having delivered his menacing warning. "My last words to you is, Stop it!" he said, as he turned to go down the stairs.
Half an hour later Mr. Kemp entered the lounge of Verney's Hotel as though in quest of some one. ”

“ I'll shoot to kill, and I'll kill everybody I can get, till someone gets me."
"Yes, Mr. Gregory!"
"Mind you, Jim, I've always considered you as my friend. I mean what I say. I'm a householder. I'm in the right ... if the law wants me that's another matter ... but no group of private citizens—"
"Good-bye, Mr. Gregory."
I walked rapidly back to the cottage. I was thinking as rapidly as I walked. For the space of a full minute I thought of packing off ignominiously with my little household.
But before I stepped in at the door something murky had cleared away inside me.
"Oh, Hildreth! Darrie!" ”

“ I have described at some length the medical mission here, and yet have done scant justice to it; of the women’s work a word must also be said. There are two fully qualified women doctors, and their hospital, with accommodation for seventy patients, is so crowded, that a new wing is now being added. They do a [28] large amount of work in the people’s homes, as many of the ladies are not to be reached otherwise, also they do work as far as time allows in the district round Moukden. When it is known that the doctor is coming, patients crowd to see her ”

“ Yesterday he was committed for trial. I haven't closed my eyes for over a week."
"So you attended the police-court proceedings?" said Kemp. And when the girl nodded her head he went on, "The more fool you. I suppose it would be too much to expect a woman to keep away even though she knew she could do no good."
"I knew that, Kincher, but I simply had to go. I should have died if I had stayed in that dreadful flat alone. I tried to, but I couldn't. I got so nervous that I had to put my handkerchief into my mouth to prevent myself from screaming aloud." ”

“ I could not sleep ... every little rustle of curtains, every creak or motion in the whole house vibrated through me ... something's going to happen to someone."
"You're only upset because Penton's in jail," I explained.
"No, that's not it ... that's nothing compared to this feeling ... this premonition—"
"Come on, let's make some coffee ... in the percolator."
"You girls sit down and I'll make it. I've been a cook several times in my career."
Someone was knocking about in the dark, upstairs. We heard a match struck....
"There, we've waked Ruth, too." ”

“ And as I fall to fuddled sleep I hear youth crying, as Harry Kemp heard it:
"I heard Youth calling in the night:
'Gone is my former world-delight;
For there is naught my feet may stay;
The morn suffuses into day,
It dare not stand a moment still
But must the world with light fulfil. ”

“ I wrote Miller to come down, that I had an exclusive interview for him.
He arrived the very night of the day he received my letter.
Darrie stepped out over to the Ronds', not to be herself brought into what she had so far managed to keep out of.
Hildreth consumed the better part of two hours fixing herself up as women do when they want to make an impression....
"Your friend from Kansas must see that you haven't made such a bad choice in picking me," she proclaimed, with that pretty droop of her mouth.
"No, no! be a good boy, don't muss me up now!" ”

“ Set in the midst of a group of women, I shone. As at the university, when I used to visit whole sorority chapters at once, and, with from five to ten girls seated about me in the parlour, talk brilliantly and easily and poetically with all of them. Left alone with any one, my mouth dried like sand, my tongue clove to my palate, I shook all over as with a palsy.
With Hildreth Baxter I was straightway, marvellously, at my ease. We talked of Keats—she seemed to know all of his verse by heart....
Shelley—she quoted his less-known fragments....
"O WORLD! O LIFE! O TIME!—"
"O world! ”

“ He might get you, or you might get him, into some sort of mess."
"Why Dr. Ward, what do you mean?"
"Penton is always protesting about something or other,—always starting fantastic schemes ... he's just finished with his Parnassus Palace experiment, which brought him a lot of newspaper notoriety ... which is to me distasteful, extremely distasteful ... yet Baxter," he added hastily, "is a real force ... he can think of more original projects in a given space of time than anyone else I know." ”

“ He came back calmer.
"Look here, Gregory, I want you to excuse that outburst—but you are a fool. This is real life we're up against now. You're not reading about this in a book."
"We'll see what can be done," I returned.
At the extreme end of the big cage, the end furthest from the entrance door, stood two cells not occupied. The last of these I had chosen for my study, a la Monte Cristo. The sheriff's son had lent me a dozen of Opie Reid's novels, a history of the Civil War from the Southern viewpoint, an arithmetic, and an algebra. Here all day long I studied and wrote assiduously. ”

“ There can be no doubt that Kemp figured in other “merrimentes” besides those “of the men of Goteham,” though they have not descended to our times: “But,” says Nash to Gabriel Harvey, “by the meanes of his [Greene’s] death thou art depriued of the remedie in lawe which thou intendedst to haue had against him for calling thy Father Ropemaker. ”

“ Vat is zat? Is not zat vonderful?”
The question and exclamation were prompted by the sudden appearance of faint mysterious lights among the bushes. That the professor viewed them as unfriendly lights was clear from the click of his rifle-locks which followed.
“It is only phosphoric light,” explained Van der Kemp. “I have often seen it thus in electric states of the atmosphere. It will probably increase—meanwhile we must seat ourselves on our boxes and do the best we can till daylight. Are you there, boys?” ”

“ I have just telephoned Miller to get Kemp from Westgate for them. Is that all right?"
"Yes"—she hesitated—"I think so."
"Let Kemp guide them," he insisted. "They'll never hold out as far as Cloudy Mountain. All they want is to shoot a boar, no matter how big it is. Miller says the boar are feeding again near the Green Pass. It's easy enough to send them there."
"Do you think that is perfectly hospitable? Rosalie and Delancy may find it rather stupid going off alone together with only Kemp to amuse them. ”

“ I lead a merry life:
One day I woo the Muse, the next,
Another fellow's wife!"
I brought this up to the cottage we had now procured, down in West Grove, N.J., where we had gone finally to escape the city, and the swarm of reporters that seemed never to cease pursuing us ... for, when we found out that they did not want propaganda, we sought to hide away from them....
Hildreth had been rather gloomy at breakfast that morning, and I thought she would join in a laugh with me over Tad's horse-play. There is a streak in me that makes me enjoy the grotesque slap-stick of the comic artists. ”

“ His first collection of poems, The Cry of Youth (1914) , like the subsequent volume, The Passing God (1919) , is full of every kind of poetry except the kind one might imagine Kemp would write. Instead of crude and boisterous verse, here is a precise and almost over-polished poetry. Kemp has, strangely enough, taken the classic formalists for his models—one can even detect the whispers of Pope and Dryden in his lines.
Chanteys and Ballads (1920) is riper and more representative. The notes are more varied, the sense of personality is more pronounced. ”

“ Heyworth has charge of a nice big women’s hospital, where there is an admirable Chinese staff of nurses. It is an infinite pity that there should be so small a European staff—only a man and a woman apiece for the two hospitals, and they have in addition to train their own staff. ”

“ I am somewhat hard of study, and like your honor, but if they well inuent any extemporall meriment, ile put out the small sacke of witte I ha’ left in venture with them.
“S. Ant. They shall not deny ’t. Signior Harlaken, he is content. I pray thee question him.
Whisper.
“Kemp. Now, Signior, how many are you in companie?
“Harl. None but my wife and my selfe, sir.
“Kemp. Your wife! why, hearke you; wil your wife do tricks in publike?
“Harl. My wife can play.
“Kemp. The honest woman, I make no question; but how if we cast a whores part or a courtisan?
“Harl. Oh, my wife is excellent at that ”