That was what everybody in the little mountain village called her. Her
real name, as she often told me, ringing out each syllable proudly in
her shrill sweet voice, was Elizabeth Rowena Marietta York. A stately
name, indeed, for the little crippled, stunted, helpless creature, and I
myself could never think of her by any name but the one the village
people used, Story-tell Lib. I had heard of her for two or three summers
in my visits to Greenhills. The village folk had talked to me of the
little lame girl who told such pretty stories out of her own head, "kind
o' fables that learnt folks things, and helped 'em without bein' too
preachy." But I had no definite idea of what the child was till I saw
and heard her myself. She was about thirteen years of age, but very
small and fragile. She was lame, and could walk only with the aid of a
crutch. Indeed, she could but hobble painfully, a few steps at a time,
with that assistance. Her little white face was not an attractive one,
her features being sharp and pinched, and her eyes faded, dull, and
almost expressionless. Only the full, prominent, rounding brow spoke of
a mind out of the common. She was an orphan, and lived with her aunt,
Miss Jane York, in an old-fashioned farmhouse on the upper road.
Miss Jane was a good woman. She kept the child neatly clothed and
comfortably fed, but I do not think she lavished many caresses or loving
words on little Lib, it was not her way, and the girl led a lonesome,
quiet, unchildlike life. Aunt Jane tried to teach her to read and write,
but, whether from the teacher's inability to impart knowledge, or from
some strange lack in the child's odd brain, Lib never learned the
lesson. She could not read a word, she did not even know her alphabet. I
cannot explain to myself or to you the one gift which gave her her
homely village name. She told stories. I listened to many of them, and I
took down from her lips several of these. They are, as you will see if
you read them, "kind o' fables," as the country folk said. They were all
simple little tales in the dialect of the hill country in which she
lived. But each held some lesson, suggested some truth, which, strangely
enough, the child herself did not seem to see; at least, she never
admitted that she saw or intended any hidden meaning.
I often questioned her as to this after we became friends. After
listening to some tale in which I could discern just the lovely truth
which would best help some troubled soul in her audience, I have
questioned her as to its meaning. I can see now, in memory, the
short-sighted, expressionless eyes of faded blue which met mine as she
said, "Don't mean anything,--it don't. It's jest a story. Stories don't
have to mean things; they're stories, and I tells 'em." That was all she
would say, and the mystery remained. What did it mean? Whence came that
strange power of giving to the people who came to her something to help
and cheer, both help and cheer hidden in a simple little story? Was it,
as I like to think, God-given, a treasure sent from above? Or would you
rather think it an inheritance from some ancestor, a writer, a teller of
tales? Or perhaps you believe in the transmigration of souls, and think
that the spirit of some Æsop of old, who spoke in parables, had entered
the frail crippled body of our little Lib, and spoke through her pinched
pale lips. I leave you your theories, I keep my own.
But one thing which I find I have omitted thus far may seem to you to
throw a little light on this matter. It does not help me much. Lib was a
wonderful listener, as well as a narrator. Miss Jane sometimes took an
occasional boarder. Teachers, clergymen, learned professors, had from
time to time tarried under her roof. And while these talked to one
another, or to some visitor from neighboring hotels, little Lib would
sit motionless and silent by the hour. One would scarcely call it
listening; to listen seems too active a verb in this case. The girl's
face wore no eager look of interest, the faded, short-sighted eyes did
not light up with intelligence, nor the features quiver with varied
emotions. If she received ideas from what fell upon her ears, it must
have been by a sort of unconscious absorption. She took it in as the
earth does the rain or the flower the sunshine. And so it was with any
reading aloud from book or paper. She would sit, utterly quiet, while
the reader's voice went on, and nothing could draw her away till it was
ended. Question her later as to what was read or spoken of, and you
gained no satisfaction. If she had any idea of what she had heard, she
had not the power of putting it into words. "I like it. I like it lots,"
she would say; that was all.
Throughout the whole summer in which I knew the child, the summer which
came so quickly, so sadly, to an end, little Lib sat, on bright, fair
days, in a low wooden chair under the maples in front of the farmhouse.
And it had grown to be the custom of her many friends, both young and
old, to gather there, and listen to her stories, if she had any to tell.
I often joined the group of listeners. On many, many days, as the season
advanced, Lib had no words for us. She had always been a fragile, puny
little creature, and this year she seemed to grow weaker, thinner, more
waxen white, each day. She had a wonderful voice, shrill, far-reaching,
but strangely sweet and clear, with a certain vibrating, reedy,
bird-like quality, which even yet thrills me as I recall it.
I am going to tell you a few of the little stories, pictures, fables,
parables, allegories,--I scarcely know what to call them,--which I heard
Story-tell Lib relate. The words are her own, but I cannot give you the
sweet tones, the quaint manner, the weird, strange personality, of the
little narrator. Let me say here that often the little parables seemed
meant to cheer and lift up Lib's own trembling soul, shut up in the
frail, crippled body. Meant, I say; perhaps that is not the right word.
For did she mean anything by these tales, at least consciously? Be that
as it may, certain of these little stories seemed to touch her own case
strangely.