The White Shield

by Myrtle Reed

It was such a pretty bicycle! Tony fondled the glittering spokes and examined the pedals with the air of a connoisseur. He forgot the hump on his back, and his solitary little house on the outskirts of the village in the joy of his new possession.

Only the night before Mrs. Carroll had sent for him and given it to him. "Arthur wanted you to have it;" she said with a tremor in her voice. Between Tony and the delicate child for whom the wheel was bought, there had been a strong bond of sympathy. Tony was always ready to talk to him, or to take him to the woods, and Arthur was the only human being Tony knew, aside from Mrs. Carroll, who did not jeer at the hump on his back, or shrink from him as though he were an evil thing.

When Arthur died, Tony felt a terrible sense of loss, although he was a man in years and his friend was but a child.

On account of his deformity, the wheel was none too small. If he could only ride it! He shivered as he thought of the shout of derision which would inevitably be his share, should he venture to ride it through the village streets. But there was the long smooth stretch of road which led to the next town, and there were innumerable paths through the woods that he knew and loved. The people in the village need never know that he had it. He could ride out there and no one be the wiser.

He pushed it into his bedroom and shut the door. He had one other treasure—an old flute; and in spite of the cruel hump it was a very happy Tony who went to sleep that night, with one hand stretched out upon the saddle of the beautiful new wheel.

His father had been a shoemaker and by lifelong toil had left a little competence to his son. Tony knew the trade also and sometimes worked at it. All that he was thus enabled to make by his own efforts, he invested in books at the store in the next town. He felt dimly that it would not be right to use his father's money in this way, but his own was a different matter.

There was a tiny paint-box too, with which he sometimes copied the pictures in the books. On the white wall of his bedroom was a poor copy of a Madonna, whose beauty he felt, but could not express. In some way, the Madonna took the place of the mother he had never known, and whose picture, even, he had never seen.

Man though he was in years, Tony had dreams of a soft hand brushing back his hair, and sweet cool lips pressed against his own. When he came back from his weekly trips to the village store, stung to the quick by the taunts and derisions of his fellow-men, he had sobbed himself to sleep many a time longing for that gracious hollow in a woman's shoulder, which seemed made for such as he.

With the first streaks of dawn, Tony started for the woods with his bicycle. There was a wide shady path, well hidden by trees, and here, he made his first attempts. It seemed a long, long time before he could ride even a little way, and the hard falls bruised, but did not discourage him. Day after day, in the early light, he led his silent steed to the secret place and returned after nightfall that none might see him.

The trees at the side of the path were more of a help than a hindrance. Often he had restored his balance by reaching out to a friendly trunk. The feeling of confidence which every bicyclist remembers, came at last, and he rode up and down the path, making the turns at the end with perfect ease, until he dropped off from sheer weariness.