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 by Read and abridged by Stephanie Poppins.
Chapter 49 Continued My worst fears are realized.
Mortification has commenced.
The doctor has told Arthur there is no hope.
No words can describe his anguish.
I can write no more.
The next was still more distressing in the tenor of its contents.
The sufferer was fast approaching dissolution,
Dragged almost to the verge of that awful chasm he trembled to contemplate from which no agony of prayers or tears could save him.
Nothing could comfort him now.
Hattersley's rough attempts at consolation were utterly in vain.
The world was nothing to Arthur.
Life and all its interests,
Its petty cares and transient pleasures were a cruel mockery.
To talk of the past was to torture him with vain remorse,
To refer to the future was to increase his anguish,
And yet to be silent was to leave him prey to his own regrets and apprehensions.
Often he dwelt with shuddering minuteness on the fate of his perishing clay,
The slow piecemeal dissolution already invading his frame,
The shroud,
The coffin,
The dark lonely grave,
And all the horrors of corruption.
If I try,
Said his afflicted wife,
To divert him from those things,
To raise his thoughts to higher things,
It is no better.
Worse and worse he groans.
If there be really life beyond the tomb and judgment after death,
How can I face it?
I cannot do him any good.
He will neither be enlightened nor roused,
Nor comforted by anything I say,
And yet he clings to me with unrelenting pertinacity,
With a kind of childish desperation,
As if I could save him from the fate he dreads.
He keeps me a day and night beside him.
He's holding my left hand now while I write.
He's held it thus for hours,
Sometimes quietly with his pale face upturned to mine,
Sometimes clutching my arm with violence,
A big drop starting from his forehead,
As the thoughts of what he sees or thinks he sees before him.
If I withdraw my hand for a moment,
It distresses him.
Stay with me,
Helen,
He says.
Let me hold you so.
It seems as if harm could not reach me while you are here.
But death will come.
It's coming now,
Fast,
As if I could believe there was nothing after.
Don't try to believe it,
Arthur.
There's joy and glory after if you will but try to reach it.
For me,
He said,
With something like a laugh,
Are we not to be judged according to the deeds done in the body?
Where's the use of a probationary existence if a man may spend it as he pleases,
Just contrary to God's decrees,
Then go to heaven with the best?
If the vilest sinner may win the reward of the holiest saint by merely saying,
I repent.
But if you sincerely repent,
I can't repent,
I only fear.
You only regret the past for its consequences to yourself.
Just so.
Except that I am sorry to have wronged you now because you are so good to me.
Think of the goodness of God and you cannot but be grieved to have offended him.
What is God?
I cannot see him or hear him.
God is only an idea.
God is infinite wisdom and power and goodness and love.
But if this idea is too vast for your human faculties,
If your mind loses itself in its overwhelming infinitude,
Fix it on him who condescended to take our nature upon him,
Who was raised to heaven even in his glorified human body,
In whom the fullness of the Godhead shines.
But Arthur only shook his head and sighed.
Then,
In another paroxysm of shuddering horror,
He tightened his grasp on my hand and arm,
And groaning and lamenting still clung to me with that wild,
Desperate earnestness so harrowing to my soul because I know I cannot help him.
I did my best to soothe and comfort him.
Death is so terrible,
He cried.
I cannot bear it.
You don't know,
Helen.
You can't imagine because you haven't had it before you.
When I'm buried,
You'll return to your own ways and be as happy as ever,
And all the world will go on just as busy and merry as if I'd never been.
While I.
.
.
He burst into tears.
You needn't let that distress you,
I said.
We shall all follow you soon enough.
I wish to God I could take you with me now,
He exclaimed.
You should plead for me.
No man can deliver his brother nor make agreement unto God for him,
I replied.
It costs more to redeem their souls.
It costs the blood of an incarnate God,
Perfect and sinless in himself,
To redeem us from the bondage of the evil one.
Let him plead for you.
But,
I fear,
I seem to speak in vain.
Arthur does not now as formerly laugh these blessed truths to scorn,
But still he cannot trust or will not comprehend them.
He cannot linger long.
He suffers dreadfully,
And so do those who wait upon him.
But I will not harass you with further details,
I have said enough.
The next day but one came another letter.
That too was put into my hands without a remark,
And these are its contents.
He is gone at last.
I sat beside him all night,
With my hand fast locked in his,
Watching the changes of his features and listening to his fading breath.
He had been silent a long time,
And I thought he would never speak again,
When he murmured faintly but distinctly,
Pray for me,
Helen.
I do pray for you,
I said,
Every hour and every minute,
Arthur,
But you must pray for yourself.
Then his lips moved,
But omitted no sound.
His looks became unsettled,
And from the incoherent half-uttered words that escaped him from time to time,
Supposing him to be now unconscious,
I gently disengaged my hand from his,
Intending to steal away for a breath of fresh air,
For I was almost ready to faint.
Then a convulsive movement of his fingers,
And a faintly whispered,
Don't leave me,
Immediately recalled me,
And I took his hand again,
And held it till he was no more.
Then I fainted.
It was not grief,
It was exhaustion that,
Till then,
I had been enabled successfully to combat.
Oh,
Frederick,
None can imagine the miseries,
Bodily and mental,
Of that death-bed.
How could I endure to think that poor trembling soul was hurried away to everlasting torment?
It would drive me mad.
But thank God I have hope,
Not only from a vague dependence on the possibility that penitence and pardon might have reached him in the last,
But from the blessed confidence that,
Through whatever purging fires the erring spirit may be doomed to pass,
Whatever fate awaits it,
Still it is not lost,
And God,
Who hateth nothing that he hath made,
Will bless it in the end.
Arthur's body will be consigned on Thursday to that dark grave he so much dreaded,
But the coffin must be closed as soon as possible.
If you,
Frederick,
Will attend the funeral,
Please come quickly,
For now I need help.
