Kemp

“ Kemp closed the door softly behind him, and the key was turned upon him forthwith. Then, as he stood with an expression of passive amazement on his face, the rapid feet came to the door of the dressing-room and that too was locked. Kemp slapped his brow with his hand. "Am I dreaming? Has the world gone mad—or have I?"
He laughed, and put his hand to the locked door. "Barred out of my own bedroom, by a flagrant absurdity!" he said. ”

“ Kemp struggled for another moment and then lay still.
"If you shout I'll smash your face," said the Invisible Man, relieving his mouth.
"I'm an Invisible Man. It's no foolishness, and no magic. I really am an Invisible Man. And I want your help. I don't want to hurt you, but if you behave like a frantic rustic, I must. Don't you remember me, Kemp?—Griffin, of University College?" ”

“ Kemp had hurried upstairs after letting Adye out, and now crouching among the broken glass and peering cautiously over the edge of the study window sill, he saw Adye stand parleying with the Unseen. “Why doesn’t he fire?” whispered Kemp to himself. Then the revolver moved a little and the glint of the sunlight flashed in Kemp’s eyes. He shaded his eyes and tried to see the source of the blinding beam.
“Surely!” he said, “Adye has given up the revolver.”
“Promise not to rush the door,” Adye was saying. “Don’t push a winning game too far. Give a man a chance.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then he had an odd impression that he had heard a low voice say, “Good Heavens!—Kemp!” But Dr. Kemp was no believer in voices.
He stood staring at the tumbled sheets. Was that really a voice? He looked about again, but noticed nothing further than the disordered and blood-stained bed. Then he distinctly heard a movement across the room, near the wash-hand stand. All men, however highly educated, retain some superstitious inklings. The feeling that is called “eerie” came upon him. He closed the door of the room, came forward to the dressing-table, and put down his burdens. ”

“ Kemp was a singularly lovable man, ‘almost culpably modest and diffident.’ His genius appears in his one finished work. A bust by Ritchie and a portrait by his wife's brother, William Bonnar, R.S.A., are in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh. Kemp's model of the Scott monument is preserved in the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art. ”

“ Hit him from behind with a stool that stood on the landing. He went downstairs like a bag of old boots.”
“But—I say! The common conventions of humanity—”
“Are all very well for common people. But the point was, Kemp, that I had to get out of that house in a disguise without his seeing me. I couldn’t think of any other way of doing it. And then I gagged him with a Louis Quatorze vest and tied him up in a sheet.” ”

“ His throat was gripped by invisible fingers, and he left his hold on the handle to defend himself. He was forced back, tripped and pitched heavily into the corner of the landing. The empty dressing-gown was flung on the top of him.
Halfway up the staircase was Colonel Adye, the recipient of Kemp’s letter, the chief of the Burdock police. He was staring aghast at the sudden appearance of Kemp, followed by the extraordinary sight of clothing tossing empty in the air. He saw Kemp felled, and struggling to his feet. He saw him rush forward, and go down again, felled like an ox. ”

“ As they stood hesitating in the hall, they heard one of the first-floor bedroom windows crack and clash. Kemp went to the door and began to slip the bolts as silently as possible. His face was a little paler than usual. “You must step straight out,” said Kemp. In another moment Adye was on the doorstep and the bolts were dropping back into the staples. He hesitated for a moment, feeling more comfortable with his back against the door. Then he marched, upright and square, down the steps. ”

“ Kemp led the way up the narrow staircase to the belvedere.
“Before we can do anything else,” said Kemp, “I must understand a little more about this invisibility of yours.” He had sat down, after one nervous glance out of the window, with the air of a man who has talking to do. His doubts of the sanity of the entire business flashed and vanished again as he looked across to where Griffin sat at the breakfast-table—a headless, handless dressing-gown, wiping unseen lips on a miraculously held serviette. ”

“ In the ‘Return from Parnassus,’ probably written about 1601, Kemp comes on the stage under his own name in the company of Burbage, and the two performers instruct Cambridge students in acting. Each actor is said to be a general favourite throughout the country, and since Kemp offers to teach his pupil how to portray ‘a foolish mayor or a foolish justice of the peace,’ it has been suggested that he created the part of Justice Shallow. ”

“ Kemp hesitated. “That was implied,” he said.
“No one?” insisted Griffin.
“Not a soul.”
“Ah! Now—” The Invisible Man stood up, and sticking his arms akimbo began to pace the study.
“I made a mistake, Kemp, a huge mistake, in carrying this thing through alone. I have wasted strength, time, opportunities. Alone—it is wonderful how little a man can do alone! To rob a little, to hurt a little, and there is the end.
“What I want, Kemp, is a goal-keeper, a helper, and a hiding-place, an arrangement whereby I can sleep and eat and rest in peace, and unsuspected. I must have a confederate. ”

“ THE INVISIBLE MAN SLEEPS
Exhausted and wounded as the Invisible Man was, he refused to accept Kemp's word that his freedom should be respected. He examined the two windows of the bedroom, drew up the blinds, and opened the sashes, to confirm Kemp's statement that a retreat by them would be possible. Outside the night was very quiet and still, and the new moon was setting over the down. Then he examined the keys of the bedroom and the two dressing-room doors, to satisfy himself that these also could be made an assurance of freedom. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ For the first time in his life Kemp discovered that the hill-road was indescribably vast and desolate, and that the beginnings of the town far below at the hill foot were strangely remote. Never had there been a slower or more painful method of progression than running. All the gaunt villas, sleeping in the afternoon sun, looked locked and barred; no doubt they were locked and barred—by his own orders. But at any rate they might have kept a lookout for an eventuality like this! The town was rising up now, the sea had dropped out of sight behind it, and people down below were stirring. ”

“ "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." ”

“ For a minute perhaps he sat, pen in mouth, admiring the rich golden colour above the crest, and then his attention was attracted by the little figure of a man, inky black, running over the hill-brow towards him. He was a shortish little man, and he wore a high hat, and he was running so fast that his legs verily twinkled.
"Another of those fools," said Doctor Kemp. "Like that ass who ran into me this morning round a corner, with his ''Visible Man a-coming, sir!' I can't imagine what possesses people. One might think we were in the thirteenth century." ”

“ In another moment a knee compressed his diaphragm, and a couple of eager hands gripped his throat, but the grip of one was weaker than the other; he grasped the wrists, heard a cry of pain from his assailant, and then the spade of the navvy came whirling through the air above him, and struck something with a dull thud. He felt a drop of moisture on his face. The grip at his throat suddenly relaxed, and with a convulsive effort, Kemp loosed himself, grasped a limp shoulder, and rolled uppermost. ”

“ I wish not you should: but come, now am I your Maister.
“Kemp. Right, and I your seruant.
“Harl. Lead the way then.
“Kemp. No, I ha more manners then so: in our countrie ’tis the custome of the Maister to go In-before his wife, and the man to follow the maister.
“Harl. In—
“Kemp. To his Mistresse.
“Harl. Yee are in the right—
“Kemp. Way to Cuck-holds-hauen; Saint Luke bee your speede!
Exeunt.” xvii:1
When, in the former of these scenes, Kemp is said to be “famous for workes in print,” I understand the ironical compliment as an allusion to his Nine daies wonder only ”

“ What has this to do with Griffin?”
“I am Griffin.”
Kemp thought. “It’s horrible,” he said. “But what devilry must happen to make a man invisible?”
“It’s no devilry. It’s a process, sane and intelligible enough—”
“It’s horrible!” said Kemp. “How on earth—?”
“It’s horrible enough. But I’m wounded and in pain, and tired ... Great God! Kemp, you are a man. Take it steady. Give me some food and drink, and let me sit down here.”
Kemp stared at the bandage as it moved across the room, then saw a basket chair dragged across the floor and come to rest near the bed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ IN DRURY LANE
"But you begin to realise now," said the Invisible Man, "the full disadvantage of my condition. I had no shelter, no covering. To get clothing was to forego all my advantage, to make of myself a strange and terrible thing. I was fasting; for to eat, to fill myself with unassimilated matter, would be to become grotesquely visible again."
"I never thought of that," said Kemp. ”

“ What's that downstairs?"
"Nothing," said Kemp, and suddenly began to speak loud and fast. "I don't agree to this, Griffin," he said. "Understand me, I don't agree to this. Why dream of playing a game against the race? How can you hope to gain happiness? Don't be a lone wolf. ”

“ Heelas staring from his window—a face of horror—had scarcely witnessed Kemp vanish, ere the asparagus was being trampled this way and that by feet unseen. At that Mr. Heelas fled precipitately upstairs, and the rest of the chase is beyond his purview. But as he passed the staircase window, he heard the side gate slam.
Emerging into the hill-road, Kemp naturally took the downward direction, and so it was he came to run in his own person the very race he had watched with such a critical eye from the belvedere study only four days ago. He ran it well for a man out of training ”

“ 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. ”

“ A few days later when Kemp’s will was published her heart bounded as she read that the testator had appointed Trenton the managing trustee of Kemp’s industrial enterprises, and that he would in all likelihood become a resident of Indianapolis. His picture was published, with a laudatory account of his career. The purchase of the [373] Cummings concern, which was consummated on the day of Kemp’s death, greatly increased the responsibilities of the trustee, who was to serve for a period of ten years. ”