Hello.
Welcome to Sleep Stories with Steph,
A romantic bedtime podcast guaranteed to help you drift off into a calm,
Relaxing sleep.
Come with me as we travel back to a time long ago where Helen Huntingdon is sacrificing everything she knows in order to protect her son.
But before we begin let us take a moment to focus on where we are now.
Take a deep breath in through your nose then let it out on a long sigh.
It is time to relax and really let go.
Feel your shoulders melt away from your ears as you sink into the support beneath you.
Feel the pressure seep away from your cheeks as your breath drops into a natural rhythm.
There is nothing you need to be doing right now and nowhere you need to go.
We are together and it is time for sleep.
The Tenant of Wildfelm Hall Read and abridged by Stephanie Poppins Chapter 39 A Scheme of Escape My greatest source of uneasiness in this time of trial was my son,
Whom his father and his father's friends delighted to encourage in all the embryo vices a little child can show.
And to instruct in him all the habits he could acquire,
In a word to make a man of him,
Was one of their staple amusements.
I need say no more to justify my alarm on his account and my determination to deliver him at any hazard from the hands of such instructors.
I first attempted to keep him always with me in the nursery and gave Rachel particular injunctions never to let him come down to dessert as long as these gentlemen stayed.
But it was no use.
These orders were immediately countermanded and overruled by his father.
He was not going to have the little fellow moped to death between an old nurse and a cursed fool of a mother.
So the little fellow came down every evening in spite of his cross-mama and learned to tipple wine like papa,
Swear like Mr.
Hattersley and have his own way like a man.
And sent mama to the devil when she tried to prevent him.
To see such things done with a roguish naivety of that pretty little child and hear such things spoken by that small infantile voice was as peculiarly piquant and irresistibly droll to them as it was inexpressibly distressing and painful to me.
And when he had set the table in a roar,
He would look round delightedly upon them all and add his shrill laugh to theirs.
But if that beaming blue eye rested on me,
Its light would vanish and he would say,
Mama,
Why don't you laugh?
Make her laugh,
Papa.
She never will.
Hence I was obliged to stay among these human brutes,
Watching an opportunity to get my child away from them,
Instead of leaving him immediately after the removal of the cloth,
As I always should have otherwise done.
Arthur was never willing to go,
And I frequently had to carry him away by force,
For which he thought me very cruel and unjust.
And sometimes his father would insist upon my letting him remain,
And then I would leave him to his kind friends and retire to indulge my bitterness and despair alone,
Or to rack my brains for a remedy to this great evil.
But here again I must do Mr.
Hargrave the justice to acknowledge that I never saw him laugh at the child's misdemeanours,
Nor heard him utter a word of encouragement to his aspirations after manly accomplishments.
But when anything very extraordinary was said or done by the infant profligate,
I noticed at times a peculiar expression in his face that I could neither interpret nor define,
A slight twitching about the muscles of the mouth,
A sudden flash in the eye as he darted a sudden glance at the child and then me,
And then I fancied there arose a gleam of hard,
Keen,
Sombre satisfaction in his countenance,
At the look of impotent wrath and anguish he was too certain to behold in mine.
On one occasion,
When Arthur had been behaving particularly ill,
And Mr.
Huntington and his guests had been particularly provoking,
And me anxious to get him out of the room,
Mr.
Hargrave suddenly rose from his seat with an aspect of stern determination,
Lifted the child from his father's knee,
Handed him out of the room,
And setting him down in the hall,
Held the door open for me,
And gravely bowed as I withdrew.
I heard high words exchanged between him and his already half inebriated host as I departed,
Leading away my bewildered and disconcerted boy,
But this should not continue,
I decided,
My child must not be abandoned to this corruption,
Better far that he should live in poverty and obscurity with a fugitive mother,
Than in luxury and affluence with such a father.
These guests might not be with us long,
But they would return again,
And he,
The most injurious of the whole,
His child's worst enemy,
Would still remain.
I could endure this for myself,
But for my son it must be borne no longer,
The world's opinion and the feelings of my friends must be alike unheeded here,
Unable to deter me from my duty.
But where should I find an asylum,
And how obtain subsistence for us both?
I would take my precious charge at early dawn,
Take the coach and flee across the Atlantic,
And seek a quiet,
Humble home in New England,
Where I would support myself and him by the labour of my hands.
The pallet and easel,
My darling playmates once,
Must be my sober toil fellows now.
But was I sufficiently skilful as an artist to obtain my livelihood in a strange land,
Without friends and without recommendations?
No,
I must wait a little,
I must labour hard to improve my talent and produce something worthwhile as a specimen of my powers.
Something to speak favourably for me,
Whether as an actual painter or a teacher.
Brilliant success,
Of course,
I did not look for,
But some degree of security from positive failure was indispensable.
I must not take my son to starve.
And then I must have money for the journey,
The passage,
And some little to support us in our retreat,
In case I should be unsuccessful at first.
And not too little either,
For who could tell how long I might have to struggle with the indifference or neglect of others,
Or my own inexperience or inability to suit their tastes?
What should I do then?
Apply to my brother and explain my circumstances?
No,
Even if I told him all my grievances,
Which I should be very reluctant to do,
He would be certain to disapprove of the step.
It would seem like madness to him,
As it would to my uncle and aunt,
Or to Millicent.
No,
I must have patience and gather a hoard of my own.
Rachel should be my only confidante.
I thought I could persuade her into this scheme,
And she could help me.
First to find out a picture dealer in some distant town.
Then,
Through her means,
I would privately sell what pictures I had on hand that would do for such a purpose,
And some of those I should thereafter paint.
Besides this,
I would contrive to dispose of my jewels.
Not the family jewels,
But the few I bought with me from home,
And those my uncle gave me on my marriage.
A few months' arduous toil might well be borne by me,
With such an end in view.
And in the interim,
My son could not be much more injured than he was already.
Having formed this resolution,
I immediately set to work to accomplish it.
I might possibly have been induced to wax cool upon it afterwards,
Or perhaps to keep weighing the pros and cons in my mind till the latter overbalanced the former,
And I was driven to relinquish the project altogether,
Or delay the execution of it to an indefinite period.
Since Lord Lobra's departure,
I had regarded the library entirely as my own,
A secure retreat at all hours of the day.
None of our gentlemen had the slightest pretensions to a literary taste,
Except Mr.
Hargrave.
And he at present was quite contented with the newspapers and periodicals of the day.
So if by any chance he should look in here,
I felt assured he would soon depart on seeing me,
For instead of becoming less cool and distant,
He had become decidedly more so since the departure of his mother and sisters,
Which was just what I wished for.
Here,
Then,
I would set up my easel,
And here work at my canvas from daylight till dusk,
With very little intermissions saving,
When pure necessity or my duties to little Arthur called me away,
For I still thought proper to devote some portion of every day exclusively to his instruction and amusement.
