The Velvet Room (10 page)

“It’s sort of fun,” Robin agreed doubtfully.

“Why don’t we work at the same table?” Gwen said. “Then we can talk if we get bored.”

“O.K.” Robin knew you couldn’t work very fast if you talked much, but she wanted to work with Gwen anyway, if she could.

The river was mostly dry at this time of year, but it was still an interesting place to explore. You had to cross several yards of sandy, rocky soil to get to the water.

Robin and Gwen left Mirlo tied to a willow at the edge of the riverbed. They went on on foot, stopping now and then to look at animal tracks in the sandy patches. Robin showed Gwen how to catch a doodle bug by breathing into its hole, and Gwen found a skunk’s footprints which looked like handprints in the sand.

When they came to the river, they found that it was only a few feet wide and ankle-deep, so they decided to take off their shoes and stockings and wade downstream for a way. In the calm eddies, water scooters zipped away to hide and dragonflies hovered on tinsel wings.

After a while Gwen said, “Look, there’s the island.” They had come to a little wooden knoll, which in the wintertime must have been surrounded by deep rushing water. But now you could almost step across the stream that flowed on each side of it. A little sandy beach sloped down to the water beneath the shade of willows and cottonwoods. The girls sat down on the cool sand.

“This is a nice place,” Robin said. “Do you come here often?”

“Pretty often,” Gwen said. “It used to be sort of my secret place when I was little. I came here once in the spring when the water was still pretty high. I rode Mirlo over, and the water came clear up to his stomach and he almost fell with me.”

“That’s funny,” Robin said.

“What is?”

“That you had a secret place. I always had one. Lots of different ones in the different places we’ve been. Some places we’ve been I’ve found real good ones. But I wouldn’t have thought that you’d have one.”

Gwen smiled and shrugged. She rolled over and started drawing pictures in the sand with her finger. Robin sat staring at the water. She was thinking of the most wonderful secret place anyone had ever had. It occurred to her that Gwen probably knew all about the Velvet Room. If only she could think of a way to ask some of the questions that were bothering her. But Gwen began talking about something else.

“After that time I rode Mirlo over here, I didn’t get to go riding again for a month.”

“How come?” Robin asked.

“Well, I’d been warned to stay away from the river during the rainy season, but it didn’t look very deep so I decided to cross anyway. But when I got home, Mirlo was still wet, and Dad found out where I’d been. Dad doesn’t get mad very often, but he sure was that time. He said if Mirlo had fallen with me, there’d be another girl ghost at Las Palmeras.”

“Another girl ghost?” Robin asked.

“Haven’t you heard about our ghost yet?”

“
Well, I did hear something,” Robin said, “but not very much. Do they call it
La Fantasma de Las Palmeras?”

“Yep,” Gwen said. “That’s our ghost. It sounds spooky, doesn’t it? But really, it isn’t a very exciting ghost. I don’t think anyone ever saw it. We used to hear it though, sometimes, when we lived in Palmeras House. It used to scare Carmela to death.”

“Why did you call it a girl ghost?” Robin asked.

“Because it’s supposed to be one. It’s supposed to be the ghost of a girl about our age, or a little older, I guess, who disappeared from Las Palmeras a long time ago. Her name was Bonita McCurdy. She was my father’s cousin, but he was just a baby when she disappeared.”

Robin was fascinated. She was learning some of the things she wanted to know without even asking. “What do you suppose happened to her?”

“
Well, the police said she drowned here in the river, and her body was washed out to sea. The river was in flood, and they found her horse the next day with a wet saddle. But some people thought she just ran away, or maybe was kidnaped. There was an old Mexican woman who went around saying that she was dead and her ghost was going to come back to haunt the rancho. Then there’s this funny wailing noise in the adobe part of the house. We didn’t hear it very often, but Carmela was sure it was
La Fantasma.”

Just thinking about it made Robin’s scalp feel tight on the back of her head. What if she’d heard it when she was right in the middle of the tunnel? “It must have been exciting, living in a house that was supposed to be haunted,” she said, hoping to keep the conversation on Palmeras House.

Gwen shrugged. “By the time I was born, not too many people believed in ghosts any more. But when my dad was little, all the workers on the ranch used to be afraid.”

It occurred to Robin that Bridget had told her something about someone named Bonita. “Did you say the girl who disappeared was named Bonita McCurdy?” she asked. “Wasn’t she the Spanish girl who married the first McCurdy who came to Las Palmeras?”

“How did you know about that?” Gwen asked.

“Bridget was telling me about it.”

“Oh yes,” Gwen said, “Bridget likes to talk about the history of Las Palmeras. Dad says she’s more interested in the history of the McCurdy family than the McCurdys themselves. But this girl, the one who disappeared, wasn’t that Bonita. That first one was only nicknamed Bonita. She really had a long Spanish name that I never can remember. The one who disappeared was her granddaughter.”

“And she was your father’s cousin?”

“Yes,” Gwen said. She seemed pleased that Robin was so interested. “And my father was living right there in Palmeras House when it happened.”

“What did Bonita’s parents do when she disappeared?” Robin asked.

“Her parents both died before it happened,” Gwen answered. “Her mother died when she was just a little baby, and her father was killed in an accident on a horse not long afterward. So she just lived with her grandfather until he died. My grandparents were living there when she disappeared.”

“Golly,” Robin said. “That’s the most mysterious thing I ever heard of. Imagine someone just disappearing like that. Right into the thin blue air.

“My dad doesn’t think she drowned,” Gwen said. “He says maybe shell come back someday. I think that’s one reason he doesn’t want to tear down Palmeras House.”

“Tear it down!” Robin said aghast. “They aren’t going to, are they?”

“Oh no,” Gwen said. “My mother thinks it would be a good idea. But Dad says it’s going to be a museum someday.”

“Why does he want it to be a museum?”

“Well, Dad belongs to this county historical society. It’s just a bunch of people who are crazy about all the old things around Santa Luisa. The older a thing is the better they like it. And the adobe part of Palmeras House is one of the oldest places in this part of the state. Dad wants it to be a museum of the early days in California. He already has a room full of old things that belonged to the McCurdy and Montoya families.”

“Does he keep the things there — in the old house?” Robin asked thoughtfully.

“Yes,” Gwen said. “When we moved out of Palmeras House, he had a lot of the best old things put in the library. He says that when the depression is over, maybe the county will fix up the other rooms and the house will become a museum.”

“Does he ever go over there — to the library, I mean?”

“Well, not much. Once or twice a year he has some of the women go over and clean everything, and he usually goes over then and looks around.” Gwen laughed. “Carmela hates to go because she’s afraid of the ghost.” All of a sudden she jumped up. “Hey,” she said, “we sure talk a lot. Last time we just talked about your family, and now we’re talking about mine. Let’s do something else. I know a place where we can catch tadpoles.”

That night, for the second time in a row, Robin had trouble going to sleep. She finally did drop off, only to waken again and again. She found her mind still sifting all the fantastic things she had heard and seen. After a while parts of dreams began to get mixed up with remembering, until it was hard to tell them apart.

In the dreams, Robin was back in Palmeras House wandering from room to room. Part of the time she was just Robin in a faded cotton dress and bare feet, moving through rooms that were empty and deserted. But now and then she seemed to be wearing a long dress with a heavy satin skirt, and all the rooms were full of lovely furniture and many dimly seen people who nodded and smiled at her as she passed.

W
HEN BRIDGET OPENED THE COTTAGE DOOR
to Robin’s knock the next morning, she threw up her hands in surprise. “Don’t say a word,” she said. “I can guess. You’ve found how to use the key.”

Robin nodded happily. Bridget shook her head very slowly from side to side, but she was smiling. “I should have known it wouldn’t take you long,” she said. “You know, Robin, I’ve worried about giving you that key. I did it on an impulse, and afterward I wasn’t at all sure it was a wise thing to do. But I think now that it was all right. You should smile that way more often. It’s not right for a child your age to be so solemn.”

Robin could understand why Bridget might have worried. “Oh, I’ll be awfully careful,” she assured her. “I won’t hurt anything or forget to close the well or anything. I promise. And thank you, thank you very much.”

“Hush now,” Bridget said. “You’ve already thanked me, my dear. Just be careful that you don’t spend so much time there that your parents worry.”

“I won’t,” Robin promised. “They’ll just think I’m here with you. That’s what they thought yesterday.”

She picked up Betty’s chain and started for the shed, but then turned back. “Oh, I wanted to ask you,” she said, “that is…I was wondering if…did Mr. McCurdy give you the key to the tunnel?”

Bridget hesitated for a minute, but then she smiled. “Why, yes — that
is
true. It was Mr. McCurdy who gave the key to me.”

When Betty was staked out on a fresh patch of dry golden hillside, Robin headed for Palmeras House at a run.

The tunnel was just as long and dark as it had been the day before, and in a way it was even more terrifying. Although Robin tried to push back the subject of the ghost, her mind kept bringing it up. As she groped her way along the tunnel, things Gwen had said kept popping up to the surface: “A girl about our age who disappeared…an old woman went around saying the girl was dead…this funny wailing noise in the adobe part of the house…”

But although Robin strained her ears until they felt stretched all out of shape, she heard nothing. Once the tunnel was behind her, her fears subsided. The big bare rooms of Palmeras House were sad and lonely, but not frightening.

Her bare feet flew soundlessly up the wide stairway, and then she was back in the Velvet Room. It was everything she had remembered, and more. As Robin closed the door behind her and leaned against it, a warm and graceful beauty seemed to welcome her. Here, in this room, she could never worry about the ghost of Las Palmeras. If there was a ghost in the Velvet Room, it was a gentle one.

That day Robin explored the entire room over again, from the gleaming curve of a chair’s leg to the features of the faces in the miniature paintings in the whatnot. There was one face in particular that held her interest. It was a tiny oval portrait of a young girl. The girl in the picture had calm dark eyes, a pointed chin, and a great deal of dark-brown hair. Her faint smile had a look of quietness and gentle strength.

She was wearing a dress with a high lacy collar. There was something disturbing about the face, as though it were familiar. Since the girl was probably a McCurdy, it seemed possible that she might resemble Gwen or her father, but Robin couldn’t really see any similarity.

It occurred to her that the girl in the portrait just might be the mysterious Bonita, the ghost of Las Palmeras. It was an interesting thought, and Robin squatted for a long time with her nose pressed to the glass of the whatnot case, just looking and wondering.

Next, she spent some time with the books. She had decided to start at one end of the room and work her way to the other. Not reading every book, of course — at least not at first. But just getting acquainted, and noticing interesting possibilities. Right away she found some beautifully illustrated copies of the Louisa May Alcott books. It took quite a while to look at all the pictures, so she decided to finish only the first shelf that day.

Finally, when the sun was getting very high and she knew she’d have to be leaving soon, Robin sat for just a little while on the window seat of the tower alcove. Curled up to the velvet cushions, she gazed down at the great green sea
of orange trees. Secret and safe in the high stone tower, Robin felt that all the world was far away and not terribly important.

In the days that followed, Robin spent some time in the Velvet Room every morning. She brought a dust rag from home and dusted and polished the furniture, and even the floors, over and over. She spent a great deal of time stretched out on the window seat of the alcove with a book, or sometimes with only her thoughts and dreams.

Some of her favorite daydreams were about Palmeras House itself. She liked to imagine it as it had been — or perhaps as she would like it to be now, if it were her house. The dry mouths of the sea horses would bubble again with sparkling water, and golden fish would glimmer in the pool below. The stone floor of the portico would be scrubbed and polished like the floor of Bridget’s cottage, and the huge sloping lawn would spread a green carpet before the entry-way. The boards would be gone from the tall downstairs windows, and in every room there would be beautiful things, just as there were in the Velvet Room.

On several mornings Robin postponed her visit to the Velvet Room long enough for a short visit with Bridget. If Bridget was working in her garden, Robin sat on the ground and pulled up the weeds near the flowers that were hard to reach with a hoe. As they worked, they talked about all sorts of things.

Bridget had lots of interesting stories to tell about when she was a young woman and lived in Switzerland. She had been married then, to an artist. Bridget and her husband, whose name was Eric, had had all sorts of adventures, like taking a trip around Europe on bicycles with hardly any money. Robin thought it sounded a little like the Williamses and their old Model T, except Bridget’s adventures sounded amusing and exciting.