Even the beginning. From the start the whole thing has the precision of machine work. Fate and its working—and the wonderful Providence which watches over Man and his future. The whole thing unerring: the incident, the work, the calamity, and the martyr. In the retrospect of disaster we may all of us grow strong in wisdom. Let us go into history.
A hot July day. A sun of scant pity, and a staggering street; panting thousands dragging along, hatless; fans and parasols; the sultry vengeance of a real day of summer. A day of bursting tires; hot pavements, and wrecked endeavor, heartaches for the seashore, for leafy bowers beside rippling water, a day of broken hopes and listless ambition.
Perhaps Fate chose the day because of its heat and because of its natural benefit on fecundity. We have no way of knowing. But we do know this: the date, the time, the meeting; the boy with the burning glass and the old doctor. So commonplace, so trivial and hidden in obscurity! Who would have guessed it? Yet it is—after the creation—one of the most important dates in the world’s history.
This is saying a whole lot. Let us go into it and see what it amounts to. Let us trace the thing out in history, weigh it up and balance it with sequence.
Of Charley Huyck we know nothing up to this day. It is a thing which, for some reason, he has always kept hidden. Recent investigation as to his previous life and antecedents have availed us nothing. Perhaps he could have told us; but as he has gone down as the world’s great martyr, there is no hope of gaining from his lips what we would so like to know.
After all, it does not matter. We have the day—the incident, and its purport, and its climax of sequence to the day of the great disaster. Also we have the blasted mountains and the lake of blue water which will ever live with his memory. His greatness is not of warfare, nor personal ambition; but of all mankind. The wreaths that we bestow upon him have no doubtful color. The man who saved the earth!
From such a beginning, Charley Huyck, lean and frail of body, with, even then, the wistfulness of the idealist, and the eyes of a poet. Charley Huyck, the boy, crossing the hot pavement with his pack of papers; the much treasured piece of glass in his pocket, and the sun which only he should master burning down upon him. A moment out of the ages; the turning of a straw destined to out-balance all the previous accumulation of man’s history.
The sun was hot and burning, and the child—he could not have been more than ten—cast a glance over his shoulder. It was in the way of calculation. In the heyday of childhood he was not dragged down by the heat and weather: he had the enthusiasm of his half-score of years and the joy of the plaything. We will not presume to call it the spirit of the scientist, though it was, perhaps, the spark of latent investigation that was destined to lead so far.
A moment picked out of destiny! A boy and a plaything. Uncounted millions of boys have played with glass and the sun rays. Who cannot remember the little, round-burning dot in the palm of the hand and the subsequent exclamation? Charley Huyck had found a new toy, it was a simple thing and as old as glass. Fate will ever be so in her working.
And the doctor? Why should he have been waiting? If it was not destiny, it was at least an accumulation of moment. In the heavy eye-glasses, the square, close-cut beard; and his uncompromising fact-seeking expression. Those who knew Dr. Robold are strong in the affirmation that he was the antithesis of all emotion. He was the sternest product of science: unbending, hardened by experiment, and caustic in his condemnation of the frailness of human nature.
It had been his one function to topple over the castles of the foolish; with his hard-seeing wisdom he had spotted sophistry where we thought it not. Even into the castles of science he had gone like a juggernaut. It is hard to have one’s theories derided—yea, even for a scientist—and to be called a fool! Dr. Robold knew no middle language;he was not relished by science.
His memory, as we have it, is that of an eccentric. A man of slight compassion, abrupt of manner and with no tact in speaking. Genius is often so; it is a strange fact that many of the greatest of men have been denied by their fellows. A great man and laughter. He was not accepted.
None of us know to-day what it cost Dr. Robold. He was not the man to tell us. Perhaps Charley Huyck might; but his lips are sealed forever. We only know that he retired to the mountain, and of the subsequent flood of benefits that rained upon mankind. And we still denied him. The great cynic on the mountain. Of the secrets of the place we know little. He was not the man to accept the investigator; he despised the curious. He had been laughed at—let be—he would work alone on the great moment of the future.
In the light of the past we may well bend knee to the doctor and his protégé, Charley Huyck. Two men and destiny! What would we be without them? One shudders to think.
A little thing, and yet one of the greatest moments in the world’s history. It must have been Fate. Why was it that this stern man, who hated all emotion, should so have unbended at this moment? That we cannot answer. But we can conjecture. Mayhap it is this: We were all wrong; we accepted the man’s exterior and profession as the fact of his marrow.
No man can lose all emotion. The doctor, was, after all, even as ourselves—he was human. Whatever may be said, we have the certainty of that moment—and of Charley Huyck.
The sun’s rays were hot; they were burning; the pavements were intolerable; the baked air in the canyoned street was dancing like that of an oven; a day of dog-days. The boy crossing the street; his arms full of papers, and the glass bulging in his little hip-pocket.
At the curb he stopped. With such a sun it was impossible to long forget his plaything. He drew it carefully out of his pocket, lay down a paper and began distancing his glass for the focus. He did not notice the man beside him. Why should he? The round dot, the brownish smoke, the red spark and the flash of flame! He stamped upon it. A moment out of boyhood; an experimental miracle as old as the age of glass, and just as delightful. The boy had spoiled the name of a great Governor of a great State; but the paper was still salable. He had had his moment. Mark that moment.
A hand touched his shoulder. The lad leaped up. “Yessir. Star or Bulletin?”
“I’ll take one of each,” said the man. “There now. I was just watching you. Do you know what you were doing?”
“Yessir. Burning paper. Startin’ fire. That’s the way the Indians did it.”
The man smiled at the perversion of fact. There is not such a distance between sticks and glass in the age of childhood.
“I know,” he said—“the Indians. But do you know how it was done; the why—why the paper began to blaze?”
“Yessir.”
“All right, explain.”
The boy looked up at him. He was a city boy and used to the streets. Here was some old high-brow challenging his wisdom. Of course he knew. “It’s the sun.”
“There,” laughed the man. “Of course. You said you knew, but you don’t. Why doesn’t the sun, without the glass, burn the paper? Tell me that.”
The boy was still looking up at him; he saw that the man was not like the others on the street. It may be that the strange intimacy kindled into being at that moment. Certainly it was a strange unbending for the doctor.
“It would if it was hot enough or you could get enough of it together.”
“Ah! Then that is what the glass is for, is it?”
“Yessir.”
“Concentration?”
“Con— I don’t know, sir. But it’s the sun. She’s sure some hot. I know a lot about the sun, sir. I’ve studied it with the glass. The glass picks up all the rays and puts them in one hole and that’s what burns the paper.
“It’s lots of fun. I’d like to have a bigger one; but it’s all I’ve got. Why, do you know, if I had a glass big enough and a place to stand, I’d burn up the earth?”
The old man laughed. “Why, Archimedes! I thought you were dead.”
“My name ain’t Archimedes. It’s Charley Huyck.”
Again the old man laughed.
“Oh, is it? Well, that’s a good name, too. And if you keep on you’ll make it famous as the name of the other.” Wherein he was foretelling history. “Where do you live?”
The boy was still looking. Ordinarily he would not have told, but he motioned back with his thumb.
“I don’t live; I room over on Brennan Street.”
“Oh, I see. You room. Where’s your mother?”
“Search me; I never saw her.”
“I see; and your father?”
“How do I know. He went floating when I was four years old.”
“Floating?”
“Yessir—to sea.”
“So your mother’s gone and your father’s floating. Archimedes is adrift. You go to school?”
“Yessir”
“What reader?”
“No reader. Sixth grade.”
“I see. What school?”
“School Twenty-six. Say, it’s hot. I can’t stand here all day. I’ve got to sell my papers.”
The man pulled out a purse.
“I’ll take the lot,” he said. Then kindly: “My boy, I would like to have you go with me.”
It was a strange moment. A little thing with the fates looking on. When destiny plays she picks strange moments. This was one. Charley Huyck went with Dr. Robold.