“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 she’ll come back some day. 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 be 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 just 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 dropped 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.
Velvet Days
WHEN 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 vaguely 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 on 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.
Sometimes Robin talked about her family, or about things she had seen and done; but nearly always her stories were about the days before the Williamses left Fresno. Nothing much had happened since then that she liked to talk about—at least, not until she came to Las Palmeras.
There was one very important area, though, that they never discussed. As if by silent agreement, they did not talk about the key, Palmeras House, or the Velvet Room. After that first day, Bridget never brought the subject up again, and neither did Robin. She didn’t understand Bridget’s silence, but then she really didn’t understand her own either—except that the feeling she had about the Velvet Room was something she could never share with anyone.
It was on about the fourth or fifth visit that Robin made a fascinating discovery in the Velvet Room. She had been browsing through the books and had worked her way up to the top of the first stack of shelves. Now she was using the top step of the ladder that ran along the shelves on a little track. This whole row of books seemed to be about the early days in California, and some of them looked very old.
She couldn’t help thinking how much her father would like to see these books. He was interested in California’s early history, at least he had been. Her thought brought the usual sharp pinch of worry about Dad, but it was easy in the Velvet Room to shut out worries like that. So she just shoved it away and went back to the books.
At the end of the shelf were several oddly shaped volumes. Some were long and narrow, like ledgers, and some were very small. The long narrow ones were full of records, written in faded old-fashioned script. They were hard to read, but Robin made out that they were dated in the 1870s and ‘80s and were mostly records of sales and purchases. There were dozens of entries concerning the sale of cattle and hides and purchases of grain and hay.
One of the very small books, too, seemed to be a record of some sort, with dated entries in elaborate, flowing handwriting. The first entry filled nearly the whole page and was dated January 1, 1890. The faded writing in an unfamiliar style was difficult to read, and Robin was about to give up and return it to the shelf when she noticed a signature at the end of the page. It was a single word beginning with an elegantly curly B: Bonita.
Afterward Robin didn’t even remember getting off the ladder and crossing the room to the alcove. But she must have, because, a long time later, that’s where she found herself. But in between, time had not existed at all. At least Robin Williams and June, 1937, had not existed. In between there had only been Palmeras House in 1890 and a girl named Bonita who had lived there then.
The Diary
JANUARY 1, 1890:
On Christmas Day Aunt Lily presented me with this beautiful volume and suggested that a young lady ought to keep a daily journal. Aunt Lily says that she was taught that a journal, faithfully kept, is not only a useful record, but a valuable discipline in orderliness and organization. She was kind enough to show me her diary and it is, indeed, very neat and impressive. She writes a lovely hand and everything is beautifully organized. By making daily entries she keeps track of all sorts of useful information, such as when the rugs were beaten and who has been on the guest list for dinner recently.
My dearest friend, Mary Ortega, keeps a diary too. However, it’s not a bit like Aunt Lily’s. Mary’s journal hasn’t any records at all, but instead, it is full of her favorite poetry, confidential observations about all her friends, and other comments of a very philosophical nature.
I don’t have as much imagination as Mary has, and I’m afraid I’ll never be as well organized as Aunt Lily is, so I might as well just begin writing and see how it turns out.
I’ll begin with some events of the past week.
The day before Christmas, Uncle Francisco and Aunt Lily and their darling baby boy arrived by train to spend the holidays. Grandpa was not well enough to go, so I was allowed to go to the station to welcome them. Of course, Tomás drove the buggy and Grandpa insisted on María’s accompanying me, but I was in charge of the expedition.
Uncle Francisco visited us last summer, but Aunt Lily has not been to Las Palmeras for a long time; and it was the first time that Grandpa and I had
seen the baby.
Little Donie is almost two years old and I’m sure that he is the most beautiful baby in the world. He liked me right away and spent almost the whole day holding on to my hand or sitting in my lap. I’ve never had a baby to play with before, except the servants’ children, and I find it hard to believe that little Donie is my very own cousin.
Grandpa was feeling better than he has for a long time. On Christmas Day he was even able to come downstairs for dinner and the presents. It was a wonderful time. Grandpa gave me a beautiful silver-studded bridle for Conchita, and I got this diary and two new dresses from Aunt Lily and Uncle Francisco. María gave me a lovely lace mantilla, and Tomás had made me a braided quirt. Of course, I wouldn’t think of using a quirt on Conchita, but it does look dashing to have one hanging from one’s wrist. I think it was the best Christmas that I have ever had.
Bonita
January 2:
We didn’t have our New Year’s Fiesta this year. It must he the first time in over fifty years that there has been no New Year’s Fiesta at Las Palmeras, but Grandpa just didn’t feel well enough. I can’t imagine why it is taking him so long to get better this time.
However, many of our friends did made a short call yesterday. The Ortegas drove down from Rancho Venado. Grandpa asked them to stay over as they usually do, but they refused. Mrs. Ortega said she thought it might be tiring for Grandpa to have company in the house. I’m sure she was wrong, but I couldn’t persuade them to stay. I wanted them to so much, because Mary and I have not seen each other for a long time, and we have so much to talk about.
While the gentlemen went up to wish Grandpa a Happy New Year, Aunt Lily and I entertained the ladies in the parlor. I would much rather have visited with Mary since she’s my very best friend, and I haven’t seen her since school let out. But Aunt Lily wanted me to help since she had never met most of the people except at her wedding three years ago.
That brings me to some very wonderful and important news. Last Wednesday Uncle Frank (Aunt Lily asked me to call him that; she says Francisco sounds ridiculous with a last name like McCurdy)—anyway, Uncle Frank told me that he and Aunt Lily and little Donie are going to stay at Las Palmeras indefinitely. I was astounded because Uncle Frank has not lived at Las Palmeras since he went away to school, and I never thought he liked it much here. Grandpa always says, “Francisco has no roots in the soil.”
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