14 The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall Abridged By Stephanie Poppins

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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.

That's it.

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 by Anne Bronte Read and abridged by Stephanie Poppins Stephanie Poppins Chapter 14 An Assault Next morning I had business in town so I mounted my horse and set forth on the expedition soon after breakfast.

It was a dull drizzly day but that was no matter.

It was all the more suitable to my frame of mind.

It was likely to be a long journey for it was no market day and the road I traversed was little frequented at any other time but that suited me all the better too.

As I trotted along however chewing the cud of bitter fancies I heard another horse of no great distance behind me but I never conjectured who the rider might be or troubled my head about him till on slackening my pace to ascend a gentle eclivity or rather suffering my horse to slacken its pace into a lazy walk for lost in my own reflections I was letting it jog on as leisurely as it thought proper.

I lost ground and my fellow traveler overtook me.

It was Mr Lawrence.

Instinctively the fingers of my whip hand tingled and grasped their charge with convulsive energy but I restrained the impulse and answering his salutation with a nod I attempted to push on.

I gave the briefest possible answers to his queries and observations and then fell back but he fell back too.

He asked if my horse was lame.

I replied with a look at which he placidly smiled.

I was as much astonished as exasperated in this singular pertinacity and imperturbable assurance on his part.

I had thought the circumstances of our last meeting would have left such an impression on his mind as to render him cold and distant ever after but instead of that he appeared not only to have forgotten all former offenses but be impenetrable as to all present incivilities.

Formerly the slightest hint or mere fancied coldness in tone had sufficed to repulse him but now positive rudeness could not drive him away.

Had he heard of my disappointment?

Was he come to witness the result and triumph in my despair?

I grasped my whip with more determined energy than before but still forbore to raise it and rode on in silence waiting for more tangible cause of offense before I opened the floodgates of my soul and poured out the damned fury that was foaming up and swelling within.

Markham,

Said he in his usual quiet tone,

Why do you quarrel with your friends because you've been disappointed in one quarter?

You have found your hopes defeated but how am I to blame for it?

I warned you beforehand you know but you would not.

Then he said no more for impelled by some fiend at my elbow I had seized my whip by the small end and swift and sudden as a flash of lightning brought the other down upon his head.

It was not without a feeling of savage satisfaction that I beheld the instant deadly pallor that overspread his face and the few red drops that trickled down his forehead while he reeled a moment in his saddle then fell backward to the ground.

The pony,

Surprised to be so strangely relieved of its burden,

Started and capered and kicked a little and then made use of its freedom to go up and crop the grass at the hedge bank while its master lays still and silent as a corpse.

Had I killed him?

An icy hand seemed to grasp my Had I killed him?

An icy hand seemed to grasp my heart and check its pulsation as I bent over him gazing with breathless intensity upon the dastardly upturned face but no he moved his eyelids and uttered a slight groan.

I breathed again he was only stunned by the fall it served him right it would teach him better manners in future.

Should I help him to his horse?

No for any other combination of offences I would but his were too unpardonable.

He might mount it himself if he liked in a while.

Already he was beginning to stir and look about him and there it was for him quietly browsing on the roadside.

So with a muttered execration I left the fellow to his fate and clapping spurs to my own horse I galloped away excited by a combination of feelings it would not be easy to analyze and perhaps if I did the result would not be very creditable to my disposition.

Shortly however the effervescence began to abate and not many minutes elapsed before I turned and gone back to look after the fate of my victim.

It was no generous impulse no kind relentings that led me to this nor even the fear of what might be the consequences to myself if I finished my assault upon the squire by leaving him thus neglected and exposed a further injury.

It was simply the voice of conscience and I took great credit to myself for attending so promptly to its dictates and judging the merit of the deed by the sacrifice it cost I was not far wrong.

Mr Lawrence and his pony had both altered their positions to some degree.

The pony had wandered eight or ten yards further away and he had managed somehow to remove himself from the middle of the road.

I found him seated in a recumbent position on the bank looking very white and sickly still and holding his cambrick handkerchief now more red than white to his head.

It must have been a powerful blow but half the credit all the blame of it whichever you please must be attributed to the whip which was garnished with a massive horse's head of plated metal.

The grass being sodden with rain afforded the young gentleman a rather inhospitable couch.

His clothes were considerably bemired and his hat was rolling in the mud on the side of the road but his thoughts seemed chiefly bent upon his pony on which he was wistfully gazing half in helpless anxiety and half in hopeless abandonment to his fate.

I dismounted however and having fastened my own animal to the nearest tree first picked up his hat intending to clap it on his head but either he considered his head unfit for a hat or the hat in its present condition unfit for his head for shrinking away the one he took the other from my the one he took the other from my hand and scornfully cast it aside.

It's good enough for you I muttered.

My next good office was to catch his pony and bring it to him which was soon accomplished for the beast was quiet enough in the main and only winced and flirted a trifle till I got hold of the bridle but then I must see him in the saddle.

Here you fellow scoundrel dog give me your hand and I'll help you to mount.

No.

He turned for me in disgust.

I attempted to take him by the arm and he shrank away as if there'd been a contamination in my touch.

What?

You won't?

Well you may sit there till doomsday for what I care but I suppose you don't want to lose all the blood in your body.

I'll just condescend to bind that up for you.

Let me alone if you please.

I muttered with all my heart.

He may go to the devil if you choose and say I sent you but before I abandon him to his fate I flung his pony's bridle over a stake in the hedge and threw him my handkerchief as his own was now saturated with blood.

He took it and cast it back to me in abhorrence and contempt with all the strength he could muster.

It wanted but this to fill the measure of his offences.

With execrations not loud but deep I left him to live or die as he could well satisfied I had done my duty in attempting to save him but forgetting how I had erred in bringing him into such a condition and how insulting and how insultingly my other services had been offered and suddenly prepared to meet the consequences if he should choose to say I had attempted to murder him which I thought not likely as it seemed probable he was actuated by some spiteful motives in so perversely refusing my assistance.

Having remounted my horse I looked back to see how he was getting on before I rode away.

He had risen from the ground and grasping his pony's mane was attempting to resume his seat in the saddle but scarcely had he put his foot in the stirrup when a sickness or dizziness seemed to overpower him.

He leant forward a moment with his head dropped on the animal's back then made one more effort which proving ineffectual he sat back down on the bank and there I left him reposing his head on the oozy turf and all appearance as calmly reclining as if he'd been taking his rest on the sofa at home.

I ought to have helped him in spite of himself to have bound up the wound he was unable to staunch and insisted upon getting him to his horse and sending him home but beside my bitter indignation against him there was the question what to say to his servants and what to say to my own family.

Either I should have to acknowledge the deed which would set me down as a madman or I must get up a lie which proved equally out of the question especially as Mr Lons would probably reveal the whole truth and thereby bring me to a tenfold disgrace unless I were villain enough to persist in my own version of the case and make him out a still greater scoundrel than he was.

No he'd only received a cut above the temple and perhaps a few bruises from the fall or the hooves of his own pony that could not kill him if he laid there half the day and if he could not help himself surely someone would be coming by.

It would be impossible the whole day should pass and no one traverse the road but ourselves.

As for what he might choose to say hereafter I would take my chance about it.

If he told lies I would contradict him.

If he told the truth I would bear it as best I could.

I was not obliged to enter into explanations further than I thought proper.

Perhaps he might choose to be silent on the subject for fear of raising inquiries as to the cause of the quarrel and drawing the public attention to his connection with Mrs Graham which whether for her sake or his own he seemed so very desirous to conceal.

Thus reasoning I trotted away to the town where I duly transacted my business and performed various little commissions for my mother and rose with very laudable exactitude considering the different circumstances of the case.

Then in returning home I was troubled with sundry misgivings about the unfortunate Lawrence.

The question what if I should find him lying still The question what if I should find him lying still on the damp earth fairly dying thrust itself most unpleasantly upon my mind and the appalling possibility pictured itself with painful vividness to my imagination as I approached the spot where I had left him.

But no thank heaven both man and horse were gone and nothing was left to witness against me but two objects.

In one place the hat saturated with rain and covered in mud and in another the crimson handkerchief soaked in a deeply tinctured pool of water for much rain had fallen in the interim.

Bad news flew fast.

It was hardly four o'clock when I got home but my mother gravely accosted me with oh Gilbert such an accident Rose has been shopping in the village and she heard that Mr Lawrence has been thrown from his horse and brought home dying.

This shocked me a trifle as you might suppose but I was comforted to hear he had frightfully fractured his skull and broken a leg for assured of the falsehood of this I trusted the rest of the story was equally exaggerated and when I heard my mother and sister so feelingly deploring his condition I had considerable difficulty in preventing myself from telling them the real extent of the injuries as far as I knew them.

You must go and see him tomorrow said my mother or today suggested Rose there's plenty of time and you can have the pony if your horse is tired won't you Gilbert as soon as you've had something to eat no no how can we tell it isn't all a false report said I oh I'm sure it isn't the village is alive about it and I saw two people that had seen others that had seen the man that found him that sounds far-fetched but it isn't so when you think of it well but Lawrence is a good rider said I it is not likely he'd fall from his horse and all and if he did it's highly improbable he should break his bones in that way no but the horse kicked him or something what his quiet little pony how do you know it was that he seldom rides any other at any rate said my mother you will call tomorrow Gilbert whether it be true or false exaggerated or otherwise we shall like to know how he is Fergus may go why not you he has more time I'm busy just now oh but Gilbert how can you be so composed about it you won't mind business for an hour or two in a case of this sort when your friend's at the point of death he is not I tell you for anything you know he may be you can't tell until you've seen him at all events he must have met with some terrible accident and you ought to see him and take it very unkind of you if you don't confound it I can't he and I have not been on good terms of late oh my dear boy surely you're not so unforgiving as to carry your little differences to such a length little differences indeed I muttered well but only remember the occasion think how don't bother me now I'll see about it I replied and my seeing about it was to send Fergus next morning with my mother's compliments to make the requisite inquiries for of course my going was out of the question or sending a message either he brought back intelligence the young squire was laid up with a complicated evils of a broken head and certain contusions and a severe cold the consequence of lying on the wet ground in the rain but there were no broken bones and no immediate prospects of dissolution it was evident then that for mrs graham's sake it was not his intention to incriminate me