Half-Past Bedtime

by Sir H. H. Bashford

There were a few children round him, some of them with nurses, but the people on the esplanade were taking very little notice of him; and by the time that Cuthbert and Doris reached him, he had stopped somersaulting and was wiping his forehead. Standing near him, dressed like a gipsy, was a woman, who was evidently his wife, and sitting on the sand was a queer-looking boy about fourteen who seemed to be their son. The clown was dressed in a baggy sort of smock, tied round his ankles with pink ribbon, and his face was white, with a crimson diamond painted on the middle of each cheek. His lips had been coloured to make them seem smiling, and he wore a wig of carroty hair, but his eyes were tired, and underneath his wig they could see some of his own hair, which was quite grey.

Then his wife brought a little box round, but none of the children seemed to have any pennies, and the two or three grown-up people who had been watching the performance turned aside without giving anything. Cuthbert and Doris heard one of them say that it was a rotten show and not worth a farthing; and then the old clown began to sing a song about a cheese that climbed out of the window. Some of the nurses laughed a little, but the children didn't understand it, and Cuthbert and Doris thought it rather stupid, but the woman had noticed them and brought them the box, and they each put a penny in it, though they didn't much want to. Then the old clown and his wife pretended to have a quarrel, and she kept knocking him down with an umbrella; but what interested them most was the queer-looking boy, who kept laughing to himself and playing with his fingers. Once or twice he got up and went straying among the audience, and they could see his mother watching him rather anxiously; and presently he came and talked to them and told them that he was a moon-boy and that his name was Albert Hezekiah.

It was now nearly seven, and the tide was coming in, and there was nobody left to watch the old clown, so his wife stopped hitting him with the umbrella and helped him on with a shabby blue overcoat. Then they emptied the pennies out of the box, and the old clown counted them in the palm of his hand.

"Ten and a half," he said, "not much of a catch, old lady," and then they looked round for Albert Hezekiah.

He was still talking to Cuthbert and Doris, and the old clown and his wife came up to them. The woman spoke to Doris.

"Don't you be frightened," she said, and the old clown tapped his forehead.

"He's a little bit touched," he said, "that's all, my dear. But he's a good lad and he's quite harmless."

Then they said good-night, and the moon-boy shook hands with them and told them that he liked them, because they had nice faces; and two or three times during the next few days they saw him playing about near his father and mother. Then one day they saw him alone, and he told them that his father was ill in bed, and that his mother had sent for the doctor, and that they had no money to pay the rent with. It seemed rather funny to think of a clown being ill, but Doris and Cuthbert each gave him sixpence, and he ran off singing, and they didn't see him again till the last day of their holiday.

This was a bright hot day, and they had bathed in the morning, and then Mrs Bodkin had cut them some sandwiches, and they had had their lunch on the top of Capstan Beacon, which was a high hill about five miles away. Then they had walked inland and had tea at a little village; and it was toward dusk, just as they were reaching the town, that they saw the moon-boy in the middle of a group of boys on a piece of waste land near the gas-works. He was waving his arms and looking rather bewildered, and the other boys were mocking him and singing a sort of song, "Loony, loony, moon-boy; loony, loony, loo"; and when they came nearer they saw that he was crying, and that one of the bigger boys was throwing stones at him.

Doris was so angry that she could hardly speak, but she caught hold of the boy who was throwing stones, and when he tried to hit her she slapped his face and told him that he was the biggest coward that she had ever seen. Then he tried to hit her again, but Cuthbert jumped in front of her, and after a minute or two Cuthbert knocked him down; and then the other boys ran away, after throwing stones at them and calling them names.