It was one of the older streets in town; at one time, he had known everyone who had lived upon it. He could call out without hesitation the names of the one-time owners – Wilson, Becket, Johnson, Random – but none of them lived here any longer. The names had changed and the faces were faces that he did not know; the stratification had shifted and he knew almost no one on the street.
The middle-young and the very old, he thought, they are the lonely ones.
He went back to the chair beside the lamp he’d lighted and sat down rather stiffly in it. He fidgeted, drumming his fingers on the arms. He wanted to get up, but there was nothing to get up for, unless it was to wash the dishes, and he didn’t want to wash them.
He could take a walk, he told himself. That might be a good idea. There was a lot of comfort in an evening walk.
He got his coat and hat and went out the door and down the walk and turned west at the gate.
He was more than halfway there, skirting the business section, before he admitted to himself that he was heading for the Stiles house and the Sitters – that he had, in fact, never intended doing otherwise.
What he might do there, what he might learn there, he had no idea. There was no actual purpose in his mind. It was almost as if he were on an unknown mission, as if he were being pushed by some unseen force into a situation of no-choice.
He came to the Stiles house and stood on the walk outside, looking at it.
It was an old house, surrounded by shade trees that had been planted many years before, and the front yard was a wilderness of shrubs. Every once in a while, someone would come and cut the lawn and maybe trim the hedges and fix up the flower beds to pay the Sitters for all the baby-
minding they had done, since the Sitters took no money.
And that was a funny thing, Dean thought, their not taking any money – just as if they didn’t need it, as if they might not know what to do with it even if they had any.
Perhaps they didn’t need it, for they bought no food and still they kept on living and never had been sick enough for anyone to know about it. There must have been times when they were cold, although no one ever mentioned it, but they bought no fuel, and Lamont Stiles had left a fund to pay the taxes – so maybe it was true that they had no need of money.
There had been a time, Dean recalled, when there had been a lot of speculation in the town about their not eating – or at least not buying any food. But after a time the speculation dwindled down and all anyone would say was that you could never figure a lot of things about alien people and there was no use in trying.
And that was right, of course.
The Stiles house, Dean realized with something of a start, was even older than his house. It was a rambler and they had been popular many years before the split-level had come in.
Heavy drapes were drawn at the windows, but there was light behind the drapes and he knew the Sitters were at home. They were usually home, of course. Except on babysitting jobs, they never left the house, and in recent years they had gone out but little, for people had gotten in the habit of dropping off the kids at the Sitters’ house. The kids never made a fuss, not even the tiny ones. They all liked going to the Sitters.
He went up the walk and climbed the stoop to ring the bell.
He waited and heard movement in the house.
The door came open and one of the Sitters stood there, with the light behind it, and he had forgotten – it had been many years since he’d seen one of the Sitters.
Shortly after Lamont Stiles had come home, Dean remembered, he had met all three of them, and in the years between, he had seen one of them from time to time a distance on the street. But the memory and the wonder had faded from his mind and now it struck him once again with all the olden force – the faery grace, the sense of suddenly standing face to face with a gentle flower.
The face, if it might be called a face, was sweet – too sweet, so sweet that it had no character and hardly an individuality. A baffling skin arrangement, like the petals of a flower, rose above the face, and the body of the Sitter was slender beyond all belief and yet so full of grace and poise that one forgot the slimness. And about the entire creature hung an air of such sweet simplicity and such a scent of innocence that it blotted out all else.
No wonder, Dean found himself thinking, that the children liked them so.
“Mr. Dean,” the Sitter said, “won’t you please come in? We are very honored.”
“Thank you,” he said, taking off his hat.
He stepped inside and heard the closing of the door and then the Sitter was at his side again.
“This chair right here,” it said. “We reserve this one for our special visitors.”
And it was all very sweet and friendly, and yet there was an alien, frightening touch.
Somewhere there were children laughing in the house. He twisted his head around to find where the laughter came from.
“They’re in the nursery,” said the Sitter. “I will close the door.”
Dean sank into the chair and perched his battered old soft hat on one bony knee, fondling it with his bony fingers.
The Sitter came back and sat down on the floor in front of him, sat down with a single, effortless motion and he had the distinct impression of the swirl of flaring skirts, although the Sitter wore none.
“Now,” the Sitter said by way of announcing that Dean commanded its entire attention.
But he did not speak, for the laughter still was in the room. Even with the door to the nursery shut, there still was childish laughter. It came from everywhere all about the room and it was an utterly happy laughter, the gay and abandoned, the unthinking, the spontaneous laughter of children hard at play.
Nor was that all.
Childish sparkle glittered in the air and there was the long forgotten sense of timelessness – of the day that never ended, that was never meant to end. A breeze was blowing out of some never-never land and it carried with it the scent of brook water bearing on its tide flotillas of fallen autumn leaves, and there was, as well, the hint of clover and of marigolds, and the smell of fuzzy, new-washed blankets such as are used in cribs.
“Mr. Dean,” the Sitter said.
He roused himself guiltily.
“I’m sorry,” he told the Sitter. “I was listening to the children.”
“But the door is closed.”
“The children in this room,” he said.
“There are no children in this room.”
“Quite right,” he said. “Quite right.”
But there were. He could hear their laughter and the patter of their feet.
There were children, or at least the sense of them, and there was also the sense of many flowers, long since died and shriveled in actuality, but with the feel of them still caged inside the room. And the sense of beauty – the beauty of many different things, of flowers and gee-gaw jewelry and little painted pictures and of gaily colored scarves, of all the things that through the years bad been given to the Sitters in lieu of money.
“This room,” he said haltingly, half-confused. “It is such a pleasant room. I’d just like to sit here.”
He felt himself sink into the room, into the youngness and the gayety. If he let go, he thought, if he only could let go, he might join the running and be the same as they.
“Mr. Dean,” the Sitter said, “you are very sensitive.”
“I am very old,” said Dean. “Maybe that’s the reason.”
The room was both ancient and antique. It was a cry across almost two centuries, with its small brick fireplace paneled in white wood, its arched doorways and the windows that stretched from floor to ceiling, covered by heavy drapes of black and green, etched with golden thread. And it had a solid comfort and a deep security that the present architecture of aluminum and glass never could achieve. It was dusty and moldy and cluttered and perhaps unsanitary, but it had the feel of home.
“I am old-fashioned,” said Dean, “and, I suspect, very close to senile, and I am afraid that the time has come again to believe in fairy tales and magic.”