The Music Box: PART III: Chapter Twenty-One

Now of her father and mother’s arrival in Seaforth and hence her own arrival in the world Emily Button knew very little. Isabelle had long fretted over when the best time was to be honest with her only daughter, to fill her in on the long story of how she and Percival had come to be together, how they had come to call Seaforth home.

Despite knowing she would have to tell her one day, something had been holding Isabelle back. She was wavering, however, and had in fact been toying with the idea of taking her daughter down to the seaside and explaining all on the night that she suffered her ‘turn’, about which Mr Crouch was now asking Emily.

The trouble for Emily (and nosy Mr Crouch) was she had not been told the full story about this either. As far as she knew, her mother had been taken ill and arrived in such a fever that she had seen things that could not have possibly been there. As a precaution, she was taken to the hospital where the doctors could make sure she was going to be all right. Emily knew this much, but had not been told what it was that Isabelle was certain she had seen - the coal-black wolf at the kitchen window, whose sudden appearance had startled her so badly she dropped the pot of soup that was to be that night’s supper.

Percival had found her standing cemented to the spot, her eyes black as the inside of a chimney and staring blankly ahead, fixed on the window. All around her the soup ran, scalding her toes without her even flinching. He rushed to her and tried to get her to speak, but her jaw was rigid. Percival looked to where she was gazing, seeing only the dark of the night at the window. Nevertheless he ran to the door, which finally snapped Isabelle from her trance.

“Don’t!”

“But why, what is it?”

Still she could not say. It was the last thing she said all week. She would not talk, would not eat, would not catch anybody’s eye. Isabelle was wasting away at an alarming rate and her husband simply could not get through to her. In his despair, though it broke his heart, Percival took his beloved to Edgewood, where people were sent from all over the countryside when suffering diseases of the mind.

For six long weeks she stayed in the stark, antiseptic ward in which she had been placed. Percival would visit her every day after he finished work and, slowly, much to his eternal relief, Isabelle began to relate to him what she had seen. Her voice sounded like it belonged to a little girl; moreover, like it was coming from some distance away. It seemed detached, hollow, like she was speaking up to him from the bottom of a well. She told him of the wolf at the window, the way his right paw had pressed up against the glass as he peered in. Percival did not dare admit it, but his blood ran cold as she described the wolf’s thick black coat, his cunning snout bellowing steam that pooled on the glass then evaporated almost as quickly, the dreadful whites of his glowing eyes and the fiery reflection of the hearth dancing in his wide pupils.

His teeth had been bared, she said, his pink tongue lolling hungrily out to the side. Even though he must have known he was being watched, the wolf steadfastly maintained his ground. The bright moonlight lit him as well as if it was day and she realised with a sudden jolt that it was not the first time she had seen him. The shock of recognition startled her more than his actual presence and it was then that she dropped the pot, at which point the wolf snapped out of his own mesmerised state and fled – leaving his breath on the glass and the imprint of his presence etched deep in her mind.

It wasn’t that Isabelle was fragile or that she had merely succumbed to fear. Far from it; she was as strong and forthright as ever. But standing there in the kitchen, confronted by this ghost of her past she had somehow slipped into her old self, a self that was so far from where she was now that it may as well have been someone else entirely. In being whisked violently back to the woods and her life there she had been confronted by her past, and hence her old self. The biggest shock lay in this dawning awareness of how much she had changed. For some time she felt miserably lost between the two selfhoods grappling for her attention – she couldn’t go back, but nor could she bear to once again give up what she had lost.

Neither Isabelle nor Percival really wanted to think about what the visit of the wolf meant. They knew that the past they thought they had safely left behind – so much so that days could now go by without a single thought harking back to that terrible night he had stared death in the face – had somehow caught up with them. As much as he wanted to believe that she must be mistaken, that she had simply seen a reflection or that it was a trick of the light, Percival knew deep down that Isabelle had seen what she said she had seen.

Then there was Emily with whom they must contend. After taking Isabelle to Edgewood Percival had told Emily that her mother was away visiting an old dear friend, but had to change his story once he discovered that she had overheard him talking with Dr Hopkins when he came to the house to discuss Isabelle’s ‘progress’. And progress she was making, at least in the doctor’s eyes. Isabelle knew that to be able to come home, she needed to convince Dr Hopkins that she had just had a silly fright and nothing more. Just as the sixth week turned over she was back home, but it would be a mistake to say it was back to anything like normal.

The lingering sense of disquiet dissipated over time into a kind of underlying unease, with Isabelle deciding that whatever it was that may be happening to her, she would not be a prisoner to her fears. As day by day passed and the immediacy of her encounter slowly faded, she began to wonder if the visitor of the night really had been there after all; whether she had merely projected something about her inner self into which she was now afraid to delve. But this didn’t really sit with her – even though it might hold a kernel of truth she knew there was more to it. She knew, one day, if she was to ever truly move on, she would have to find out what it was all about.