The Velvet Room Read Online Free Page A

lower, and was not made of stone. In places where the rough plaster had fallen away, she could see the surface of adobe bricks. She had seen bricks like that before. Once when they were going through Ventura, they had stopped for groceries on the main street right near the old Spanish mission. Robin had been peeking in the door when a priest came along and said it was all right to go in. She had been all alone in the huge old church. The thick adobe wall shut out the noises of the town, but the deep hush had seemed alive with ancient echoes.
    The adobe wing of the house had a two-story veranda with wooden pillars and wrought-iron railings. The veranda faced a patio whose brick paving was scarcely visible through the dirt and debris. In the center of the patio was what seemed to be a boarded-up well, and near it was a second fountain. But this fountain was crumbling with age, and the stone figure in the center was chipped and broken, until it was impossible to tell what it had once represented.
    From the brick patio another stone building was just visible among the trees. It was long and low, and as Robin walked toward it she decided it must once have been a stable or a garage. But before she had come close enough to be sure, she saw something that made her change her direction. The first rolling dips of the foothills began just a few yards ahead, and from the shelter of a tree-covered mound there rose a thin white twist of smoke.
    Curiosity and apprehension seesawed in Robin’s mind as she rounded the wooded rise and saw before her a scene from a storybook.
    A tiny stone house with a rough, shake roof sat up to its diamond-paned windows in hollyhocks and roses, looking like something from another time and place. A neat but faded picket fence enclosed the house and garden. Under the hollyhocks a half dozen black and white speckled chickens scratched and pecked.
    Robin was just thinking that you could almost believe that three bears or perhaps seven dwarfs were going to appear in the doorway when, quite suddenly, the door opened and a woman came out. It happened so quickly there was no time to hide. The woman moved toward Robin slowly, leaning on a cane. When she reached the gate, she unlatched it and held it open, smiling and nodding her head.
    It was all so strange and unexpected that Robin was frightened. It was no use telling herself that a tiny, crippled lady was harmless. For one ridiculous moment Hansel and Gretel flitted through her mind. But she didn’t run.
    She didn’t run because of the way she sometimes had of switching places with people in her mind. For just a split second, she was standing there behind the gate, holding it open with an unsteady hand and watching the fear in someone’s eyes. So, although she wasn’t at all comfortable about it, she walked up to the gate and said, “Hello.”
    “Hello, my dear,” the woman said. From up close she didn’t look old. She was small and a little bent, and her hair was white, but her face was not deeply lined. Her cheeks were pink, and her small chin came to a youthful point. “It’s so nice of you to come calling. Have you just been over at Palmeras House?”
    “I guess so,” Robin said. “I’ve been to that big stone house over there. Do you think anyone minds? I was only looking at it.”
    “I don’t think anyone would mind in that case,” the woman said. She turned slowly and led the way around the house on a narrow path among the flowers. “Have you been there before?”
    “Just once,” Robin said, “but I want to go back some more if no one cares. I like it there. Do you know who owns it?”
    The woman stopped and turned to Robin smiling. “Why, the McCurdys own it, child. All the land for a mile or so on every side of us belongs to the McCurdys. “I’m surprised you don’t know that. Aren’t you from the Village?”
    For just a minute Robin wondered how the woman knew. Then she glanced down at her bare feet and too-small faded dress. She