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 In the morning little Arthur roused me with his gentle kisses and he was safely clasped in my arms at once,
Many leagues away from his unworthy father.
Broad daylight illuminated the apartment for the sun was high in heaven although obscured by rolling masses of autumnal vapour.
The scene indeed was not remarkably cheerful in itself,
Either within or without.
The large bare room we found ourselves in,
With its grim old furniture,
The narrow lattice windows revealing the dull grey sky above and the desolate wilderness below,
Where the dark stone walls and iron gate,
The rank growth of grass and greeds and the hardy evergreens of preternatural forms alone remained to tell there had been once a garden.
And the bleak and barren fields beyond might have struck me as gloomy enough at another time but now each separate object seemed to echo back my own exhilarating sense of hope and freedom.
Indefinite were the dreams of the far past and bright anticipations of the future.
I should rejoice with more security to be sure,
Had the broad sea rolled between my present and my former homes,
But surely in this lonely spot I might remain unknown.
And then I had my brother here to cheer my solitude with his occasional visits.
He came that morning and I have had several interviews with him since,
But he is obliged to be very cautious when and how he comes.
Not even his servants or his best friends know of his visit to Wildfell Hall,
Except on such occasions as a landlord might be expected to call upon a stranger tenant.
I have now been here nearly a fortnight and but for one disturbing care,
The haunting dread of discovery,
I am comfortably settled in my new home.
Frederick has supplied me with all the requisite furniture and painting materials,
Rachel has sold most of my clothes for me in a distant town,
And procured me a wardrobe more suitable to my present position.
I have a second-hand piano,
A tolerably well-stocked bookcase,
And my other room has assumed quite a professional business-like appearance already.
I am working hard to repay my brother for all his expenses on my account,
Not that there is the slightest necessity for anything of the kind,
But it pleases me to do so.
I shall have so much more pleasure in my labour now,
In my earnings,
My frugal fare,
And household economy,
When I know I am paying my way honestly,
And that what little I possess is legitimately all my own.
No one suffers for my folly.
I shall make him take the last penny I owe him if I can possibly affect it without offending him too deeply.
I have a few pictures already done,
For I told Rachel to pack up all I had,
And she executed her commission too well,
For among the rest she put up a portrait of Mr Huntingdon I had painted in the first year of my marriage.
It struck me with dismay at the moment when I took it from the box,
And beheld those eyes fixed upon me in their mocking mirth,
As if exulting still in his power to control my fate and deriding my efforts to escape.
How wildly different had been my feelings in painting that portrait to what they were now locking in upon it!
How I had studied and toiled to produce something as I thought worthy of the original!
What mingled pleasure and dissatisfaction I had in the result of my labours!
Pleasure for the likeness I had caught,
Dissatisfaction because I had not made it handsome enough!
Now,
Of course,
I see no beauty in it,
Nothing pleasing in any part of its expression,
And yet it is far handsomer and far more agreeable than I should say he is now,
For these six years have wrought almost a great change upon himself as on my feelings regarding him.
The frame,
However,
Is handsome enough,
It will serve for another painting.
The picture itself I have not destroyed as I first intended,
I have put it aside.
Chiefly,
I know that I may compare my son's features and countenance with this as he grows up,
And thus be engaged to judge how much or how little he resembles his father.
It seems Mr.
Huntington is making every assertion to discover the place of my retreat.
He has been in person to stunningly seeking redress for his grievances,
Expecting to hear of his victims if not to find them there,
And has told so many lies,
And with such unblushing coolness,
That my uncle more than half believes him,
And strongly advocates my going back to him and being friends again.
But my aunt,
Of course,
Knows much better.
She is too cool and cautious,
And too well acquainted with both my husband's character and my own,
To be imposed upon by any specious falsehoods the former could invent.
But he does not want me back,
He merely wants my child,
And he gives my friends to understand if I prefer living apart from him,
He will indulge the whim,
And let me do so unmolested,
And even settle a reasonable allowance on me,
Provided I'll immediately deliver up his son.
But heaven help me,
I am not going to sell my child for gold,
Though it were to save both him and me from starving.
It would be better than he should die with me,
Than he should live with his father.
One day,
Frederick showed me a letter he'd received from that gentleman,
Full of cool impudence,
Such as would astonish anyone who did not know him,
But such as I am convinced none would know better how to answer than my brother.
He,
Of course,
Gave me no account of his reply,
Except to tell me he had not acknowledged his acquaintance with my place of refuge,
But rather left it to be inferred that it was quite unknown to him,
By saying it was useless to apply to him or any of my relations for information on the subject,
As it appeared I'd been driven to such extremity that I'd concealed my retreat even from my best friends.
But if that he had known it,
Or should at any time be made aware of it,
Most certainly Mr.
Huntington would be the last person to whom he should communicate the intelligence,
And that he need not trouble himself to bargain for my child,
For he,
Frederick,
Fancied he knew enough of his sister to enable him to declare that wherever she might be,
Or however situated,
No consideration would induce her to deliver him up.
