The Fall of the House of de Bourgh

There were cracks in the foundation of Rosings. Seventy or eighty or however many thousands of pounds had been poured into the grand estate, ostensibly ensuring delivery of the finest and most secure monument money could buy, and yet, there were cracks. Anne saw them near the bottom of the walls near doorways as she walked through the house, and, once seen, she could never tear her eyes from them on subsequent passes. As she grew, so did the cracks, and neither seemed of much concern to anyone else.

It did not seem unlikely that Rosings was held up by the sheer force of her mother’s will. Every facet of reality seemed to be shaped by each musing of Lady Catherine’s, and if she commanded her walls to hold firm, the walls would, of course, comply. The only difficulty with this theory was Anne’s own existence; if Lady Catherine had wanted a healthy, strong, beautiful, vivacious daughter, surely she would simply have had one. Instead, Anne thought to herself as she glided down the cracking corridors, she has me.

She had never thought of herself as anything but a daughter. It was not for lack of imagination; in her head, alternate versions of herself became painters, opera singers, pirate captains, climbers of trees, tellers of tales. For all her wild dreams, she could not think of how one would go about becoming any of those things. Her own story never seemed to extend past the front door of Rosings. How much of that, she wondered, was inability, and how much was immuration?

As a child, she had never questioned anything — at least, not more than once. Quickly the inquisitive streak in her was quelled, and in its place instilled a sense of obedience. It was only when she was older that she began to look back on all the things she had always been told she could not do, and wondered when they had determined her incapability. She did not recall ever having been allowed to try.

Perhaps she was what Lady Catherine had wanted, after all. The great lady could not have stomached an equal.

In a central hall upstairs, painted generations of de Bourghs silently watched Anne grow up. The windowless corridor, ideal for preserving the artworks from light damage, felt like an underground crypt, lit by wall-mounted torches and inhabited by the wordless dead. The most recent portrait in the hall was of her mother; no portrait of Anne graced the hallowed walls. She wondered what other unworthy relatives haunted the gallery unseen, lurking in the spaces between the images of their grander and less easily suppressed counterparts.

Sometimes, in the corners of her vision, she could see flashing glimpses of lives she might have known. Looking down on the gardens from the windows, she saw another version of herself walking with an admirer, laughing and sharing pretty witticisms. In a window seat, she saw herself reading a book that was not immediately snatched away from her with exclamations of concern over her poor, strained eyes. While strolling through the gardens, she looked up to see herself flying in the sky. All these were dreams of equal possibility, she thought. Often she passed a mirror and expected to see one of her more exciting doubles behind her in the reflection, dancing or singing or being embraced. Anne wondered whether it was her situation or her personality that prevented her from living their lives — if she would always have been a wing-clipped creature or if, given the chance, she too might have flown.

Anne read herself in other people’s faces. Put on display for her mother’s visitors — for none came to see her on her own merit — she watched to see what story the guests had decided upon for her. In most faces, she saw pity hidden beneath a thin veneer of genteel awe. They praised attributes she did not possess and acclaimed talents she had not developed, their eyes betraying them with tears for the unfortunate, useless creature. In some, she saw utter indifference, no false or earnest attempt at caring whether she sat before them or ran screaming around the room. Most curiously, some looked at her with contempt. She did not believe she could have wronged people she had never met. Perhaps she disgusted them for being unworthy of her position: a great lady with nothing great about her. Anne could not disagree.

At night, she dreamed of dismantling Rosings. With her own hands, she dug into the cracks in the walls and ripped the house down in pieces, brick by beautiful brick. She threw priceless china across lavish rooms and thrilled at the pain of slicing her fingers on the shards. Down came the glittering chandeliers, echoing off marble and stone with a resounding clatter of metal and crystal. Sharp as those broken pieces was her voice as she screamed at the pristine walls, every forbidden word erupting from her like knives as they shredded her throat hoarse. Kicking her legs through the windows, she laughed with shrieking abandon as the glass fell like sheets of rain on the soft, green grass below. She pulled the paintings off the walls and threw them on a bonfire, and the smell of smoke clung to her even as she awoke.

The only activity permitted her was playing cards, since one is needed to do little more than occupy a space. As a delicate ornament, she fulfilled her duties admirably. She found it intriguing that, though her discomfort was of constant, needling concern in every other situation, it was never once considered that her mother’s company might be a source of her strain. Lady Catherine loudly criticised each play of Anne’s, lamenting that her health prevented her from such strenuous mental endeavours as learning to properly play cards, and then quickly moved on to another anecdote about her own generosity and graciousness before anyone could offer further comment. If such was the conduct of civilised society, Anne felt grateful that she need never be subjected to it further.

She watched the cracks in the walls of the drawing-room climb. They seemed to grow before her very eyes as her mother berated her guest, for once, instead of Anne. As her eyes followed the gradually climbing cracks, it occurred to her that she had never before heard her mother speak to anyone else in the derisive, judgmental tone she always used with her, and a small, quiet ball of anger began to rise within her. Was she now so shattered that Lady Catherine found no use in hammering at her further, and had moved on to others?

The fading sunlight coming in from the windows mixed with the soft, steady candle flame, illuminating the room and casting shadows on the walls. Between blue and gold and shadow, the cracks danced and rose from the darkness, stretching upward. As they touched the ceiling, she heard the sound: a ringing, resounding break — the metallic ring of a broken shackle falling on marble — that echoed around the room and out through the rest of the house. The sun set on the broken house of Rosings, and Anne saw one of her imagined selves emerge from the crack in the wall. Her other self looked exactly like her, dressed in the same clothes, hair fixed in the same fashion, but the other Anne was grinning, nearly laughing: the same person, but free.

“Anne,” Lady Catherine snapped, and Anne turned her attention back to her mother. “We shall play quadrille.”

“No,” replied Anne, rising from her seat. Lady Catherine looked at her incredulously. Anne walked serenely to the card-table at the opposite end of the room and sat down with an air of cultivated grace. “No, Mother. You may play at quadrille. I shall play cassino.”

 

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