It occurred to me that possibly I should go over there, since Fay was my sister. But I did not. After all, she had thrown me out. So I remained at the Hambros’ the balance of the day, eating dinner with them that evening.
At eight-thirty, we got the news from Dorothy Bentely, who lived down the road from Charley and Fay. It was really terrible. I could hardly believe it. Mrs. Hambro thought I should go over, or at least phone. We discussed it, and then Mrs. Hambro called a special meeting of the group to consider the whole situation and to see what significance it had in the cosmic program that was unfolding.
The group, after discussing it, came to the conclusion that the death was a symptom of the anarchy and dissolution attending the last agonies of the Earth before it became superceded. But we had still not decided whether I should go over. We put Marion Lane into a trance –Mrs. Hambro doing the actual hypnotizing– and she said that probably I should try to get in touch with Nat Anteil and find out if Fay wanted to see me. Because of the data that I had turned over to the group concerning Fay and Nat, the group had taken an active interest in their situation, viewing it as a manifestation on an earthly plane of certain super-terrestrial forces. None of us had been clear as to the nature or plan of these forces; we did not expect the goal to be revealed until the very end. That is, until toward the end of April, 1959. Meanwhile we had all kept in touch, as we did with everything else going on.
Using Mrs. Hambro’s library phone I called Nat Anteil. We had found that when we used that phone –as contrasted to the extension in the kitchen or the living room– we got better results. It was the luckiest phone in the house, and in a situation this grave I wanted everything favorable in the universe to be at work.
However, I got no answer to my rings. No doubt Nathan was over at the Home house.
The next day I called Fay’s number several times, and at last got an answer. She said only that she was too busy to talk and would call back; thereupon she hung up, and did not call back. The next contact I had was a printed announcement, mailed by her, of the services.
I did not attend the services, because it seems to me, as Pythagoras says, the body is the tomb of the soul and that by being born a person has already begun to die. The physical attribute of Charley which would be on display at the mausoleum was of no consequence to a person like myself who is concerned –not with this world– but with the real, that is, the eternal. Charley Hume, or the essence of him, the soul, the spark, had not been extinguished; it still existed as it always had, al though now we could not see it. As Mrs. Hambro phrased it, the corruptible man must put on immortality, and I thought that was a good way of putting it. So I did not feel that Charley had left us; he was still hovering in the sky near Drake’s Landing. And it would not be very many more days before the rest of us joined him — a fact he was ignorant of when he took his own life.
During this time speculation throughout the Point Reyes Tomales Bay area concerned whether Nat and Fay would stay together or whether Charley’s death would cause them to break up through remorse. At first the issue seemed in doubt. Neighbors along their road, especially Mrs. Bentely, reported that Nat was not spending much time at the Hume home. The children had been taken out of school temporarily, so they could not be asked. But then his car was seen going back and forth once more, and the consensus was that they were once again resuming their relationship.
The item published in the Baywood Press merely mentioned that Charley Hume of Drake’s Landing had “taken his own life,” due apparently to despondency over ill-health. The article mentioned that he had had a heart attack and had been just released from the hospital. It did not mention Nathan at all, only that “he is survived by his widow, Fay, and his two daughters Elsie and Bonnie.” The headline read:
C.B. HUME ENDS OWN LIFE
The group felt that a much fuller account could have been given, and I prepared a complete factual presentation, describing Fay’s relationship with Nathan fully, and informing the public at large that the real cause of Charley’s death had not been despondency over ill-health at all but his having discovered that during his period in the hospital his wife had cheated on him with another man. However, the Baywood Press declined to publish this; in fact they did not even acknowledge receiving it — although, to be perfectly fair to them, I must admit that we were careful not to give our names or box numbers in case there was any legal action taken regarding use of the mails, etc.
However it did not matter whether the Baywood Press chose to publish the complete account or not, since everybody in the area knew the real story anyhow. It was the main topic of discussion at the post office and the grocery store for weeks on end. And certainly, in a democracy, this is right. The public should know the facts. Otherwise it can’t judge.
In reference to the element ofjudgment, it was our observation that the average opinion in the area ran fairly strongly against Fay and Nat, and quite often we heard words of censure — although, of course, these were not delivered to either of them, and certainly not to the children. The Bluebirds continued to meet under Fay’s guidance at the Hume household. Fay still attended the dance group, and none of the women either resigned or withdrew their children. The only overt action taken in reprimand of Fay and Nat was that some residents ceased waving to them when their car passed, and two or three mothers that I know of declined to permit their daughters to be picked up by Fay to play in the afternoons at the Hume house. But of course that had begun before Charley’s death; it took place as soon as the group promulgated the original dramatized presentation that I made available to them. Mrs. Hambro had had it mimeographed and mailed out to the list of residents that she had gotten from the Republican Party in Marin County, so persons as far away as Novato had been fully informed.
I don’t think that either Nat or Fay were too conscious of this public disapproval, since they had so many problems of their own to settle. For a fact I know that they were concerned with the two children hearing something unpleasant on the playground, but when this did not transpire, their apprehension diminished. Outside of that, they seemed more interested in how to arrange their own lives, and I did not blame them for being wrapped up in that; they certainly had overwhelming moral and practical problems to cope with.
A week or so later I received a letter from an attorney in San Rafael named Walter W. Sipe, informing me that I was wanted at ten in the morning on April 6th in his office on B Street. It had to do with the C.B. Hume estate.
Mrs. Hambro felt very strongly that I should be there; she not only urged me to go but promised to drive me down. So on that morning, having put on a coat and slacks and tie of Mr. Hambro’s, I was driven down by Mrs. Hambro and let off at the lawyer’s office building.
In the office I found Fay and the two girls and some adults that I had never seen before. Later I learned that some of them had worked for Charley at his plant in Petaluma and some were relatives of his who had flown out from Chicago.
Nat, of course, was not present.
We were given chairs, and after we had seated ourselves the lawyer read us the will that Charley had made out. I could make little or no sense out of it. It was not until days later that I understood what it meant. Legal language being what it is, I am still not sure about certain details. In any case, the gist of the disposition of his estate was this. Mainly, he was concerned about his two daughters, which was understandable. Since he had had a good deal of distrust of Fay for years –which I had recognized already– he had started a process of withdrawing capital from his plant and putting that capital into stocks and bonds in the children’s names. This had all been done before his death. The plant, then, was not worth nearly as much as might have been thought; in fact, it had been bled to the bone.