Thersites

“ CRESSIDA. Good night. I prithee come. Exit DIOMEDES
Troilus, farewell! One eye yet looks on thee;
But with my heart the other eye doth see.
Ah, poor our sex! this fault in us I find,
The error of our eye directs our mind.
What error leads must err; O, then conclude,
Minds sway'd by eyes are full of turpitude.
Exit
THERSITES. A proof of strength she could not publish more,
Unless she said 'My mind is now turn'd whore.'
ULYSSES. All's done, my lord.
TROILUS. It is.
ULYSSES. Why stay we, then?
TROILUS. To make a recordation to my soul
Of every syllable that here was spoke. ”

“ THERSITES, the ugliest man in the Greek camp before Troy, celebrated for his biting tongue. The special objects of his attack were the leaders of the army, and Homer (Iliad, ii. 212) tells how he was chastised by Odysseus for daring to abuse the commander-in-chief. According to a later story, Achilles, after he had slain the Amazonian queen Penthesilea, bitterly lamented her death; for this he was reviled by Thersites, who even insulted the body of the dead queen. ”

“ THERSITES. Ay, do, do; thou sodden-witted lord! Thou hast no more
brain than I have in mine elbows; an assinico may tutor thee. You
scurvy valiant ass! Thou art here but to thrash Troyans, and thou
art bought and sold among those of any wit like a barbarian
slave. If thou use to beat me, I will begin at thy heel and tell
what thou art by inches, thou thing of no bowels, thou!
AJAX. You dog!
THERSITES. You scurvy lord!
AJAX. You cur! [Strikes him]
THERSITES. Mars his idiot! Do, rudeness; do, camel; do, do.
Enter ACHILLES and PATROCLUS
ACHILLES. Why, how now, Ajax! ”

“ Hector, by this, is arming him in Troy;
Ajax, your guard, stays to conduct you home.
TROILUS.
Have with you, Prince. My courteous lord, adieu.
Fairwell, revolted fair! and, Diomed,
Stand fast, and wear a castle on thy head.
ULYSSES.
I’ll bring you to the gates.
TROILUS.
Accept distracted thanks.
[Exeunt Troilus, Aeneas and Ulysses.]
THERSITES. Would I could meet that rogue Diomed! I would croak like a raven; I would bode, I would bode. Patroclus will give me anything for the intelligence of this whore; the parrot will not do more for an almond than he for a commodious drab. ”

“ Meanwhile, was the girl Marie Roche, and nothing more? Did that arresting look of nobility go for nothing, or was she playing a part? If Rosalie knew, Thérèse might help. Now how fortunate that he had always kept on good terms with Thérèse.
He took her a pair of gold ear-rings that evening, and whilst she set them dangling in her ears, he slipped an arm about her, and kissed her smooth red cheek.
"Morbleu!" he swore, "you 're a handsome creature, Thérèse; there 's no one to touch you."
"What do you want?" asked Thérèse, with a shrewd glance into his would-be amorous eyes. ”

“ She tried to recapture her imaginings of the night; and, indeed, at Argelouse the day was almost as quiet and as dark as the night. In these days, the shortest in the year, time disappears under the pall of rain, and one hour melts into the next; dusk passes into dusk in unalterable silence. But Thérèse had no desire for sleep, and her dreams became more and more vivid; she searched her past methodically for forgotten faces, lips that she had loved from afar, vague forms that casual encounters, or the chances of the night, had brought into contact with her young body. ”

“ From time to time a workman on a bicycle, or a trap came past, and she drew close in to the houses to avoid being splashed with mud. But Thérèse was hidden by the gathering dusk, and no one recognised her. The smell of fog and baking bread was for her not merely the usual evening smell of a little town ”

“ It was strange that Thérèse only remembered the days that followed the departure of Anne and of the La Traves as of a period of torpor. At Argelouse, where it had been agreed that she should find the best means of working on Azévédo and making him give the girl up, she thought of nothing but rest and sleep. Bernard had agreed not to live in his own house, but in Thérèse’s, which was much more comfortable and where Aunt Clara spared them all the worries of housekeeping. What did other people matter to Thérèse? Let them arrange their own affairs. ”

“ You are nothing: all that exists is the name you bear, alas! In a few months, when every one is convinced of our good relations, and Anne has married young Deguilhem, ... you may be aware that the Deguilhems are insisting on some little delay and asking for time to think matters over ... then I shall at last be able to go and live at Saint Clair: you will stay here. You will be neurasthenic, or something....”
“Mad, perhaps?”
“No, that would injure Marie. But we shall find plenty of plausible reasons.... And that is all.”
Thérèse murmured: “At Argelouse ... until I die....” ”

“ Thérèse said to her more than once that, “for a rich young man, Deguilhem wasn’t at all bad.”
“But, Thérèse, I’ve hardly looked at him: he wears glasses, he’s bald,—why, he’s an old man.”
“He’s twenty-nine.”
“Exactly what I said, he’s an old man,—and besides, old or not....”
At dinner in the evening, the La Traves were talking about Biarritz, and began to consider the question of hotels. Thérèse watched Anne, a body without movement and without soul. “Make an effort”; Madame de la Trave kept on saying: “you can if you try.” Anne raised [Pg 81] the spoon to her lips with a mechanical gesture. ”

“ Another servant robed in white with a scarlet sash about his waist received Thresk from the camel-driver.
He spoke a few words in Hindustani, but Thresk shook his head. Then the man moved towards the marquee and Thresk followed him. He was conscious of a curious excitement, and only when he caught his breath was he aware that his heart was beating fast. As they neared the tent he heard voices within. They grew louder as he reached it—one was a man's, loud, wrathful, the other was a woman's. ”

“ She went up to her room and turned on the light, and sat down in her chair just as she had done after her first dinner at Little Beeding. She had foreseen then all the troubles which had since beset her, but she had seemed to have passed through them—until this afternoon. Over there in the library of the big house was Henry Thresk—the stranger. Very likely he was at this moment writing to her. If he had only consented to come over in the morning and give her the chance of pleading with him! She went to the window and, drawing up the blind, leaned her head out and looked across the meadow. ”

“ Always the same deserted look, the bright cruel sunshine, the hot sickening smells, the horror of a nameless something in the air. Thérèse could bear it no longer: the moans she had heard were in her ears, her heart beat almost to suffocation, and she turned and ran back with all her might.
Afterwards in her room she reproached herself and cried bitterly over what she called her cowardice. It was not cowardice, although she would have it so. If she had been brought face to face with the fever she would not have feared it. ”

“ She was awakened by the throbbing engines of a motor-car; she recognised Bernard’s voice in the entrance-hall and also Madame de la Trave’s. When Balionte, completely out of breath, had pushed open the door without knocking, Thérèse was already standing up before the mirror. She was putting rouge on her cheeks and lips. “I must not frighten the poor young man,” she said to herself. ”

“ She sat and stirred the fire ... but the thick resinous smoke made her eyes smart and irritated her throat, which had already been injured by tobacco. No sooner had Balionte fetched away the remains of a hurried meal, than Thérèse put out the lamp and went to bed. How many hours she lay there before sleep came to her deliverance! The silence of Argelouse prevented her sleeping: she preferred the windy nights,—the confused murmur of the pines is full of human kindness. It soothed the turmoil of her mind. The wild nights of the equinox sent her to sleep better than the nights when all was still. ”

“ Long after he had shut the door Thérèse had remained lying on the sofa smoking cigarettes, and staring at the great letters of blackened gilt, fixed to the balcony opposite: then she had torn open the first envelope. No: it could not be that sweet little fool, that light-headed little Convent girl who had conceived these words of flame. It could not be that chilly little heart,—for such it was, and Thérèse ought to know!—which had poured forth that Song of Songs, that long ecstatic lamentation of a woman possessed, of a body almost stricken down with joy, from the first encounter. ”

“ But she persisted, called in the aid of her lovely smile, and spoke with certain low and husky intonations he had always liked.
“But now, Bernard, I feel clearly that the Thérèse who stamps out her cigarette because a spark will set the undergrowth on fire, the Thérèse who liked to count the pines, and look after her resin:—the Thérèse who was proud to marry a Desqueyroux, to hold a place in one of the best families of the district, glad at last to settle down, as the phrase goes;—that Thérèse [Pg 203] is as real as the other, and as alive: No, there was no need to sacrifice her to the other.” ”

“ We stopped at the edge, the furthest edge of the last caress, but because he wanted to, not because I insisted; it is really he who resists me, and I who long to reach those unknown limits the mere approach to which, he often tells me, is beyond all joys there are: but he won’t go any further: he is proud of being able to stop where he says others cannot help letting themselves go.”
Thérèse opened the window, tore up the letters into tiny pieces, bending out over the stone abyss through which, in that hour before the dawn, rumbled a solitary dung-cart. ”

“ A smoky oil lamp lit up the plaster walls of the Nizan station and a carriage outside it: and all about them gathered the encompassing darkness. A train standing in the station whistled and hooted dismally. Gardère took Thérèse’s bag and again stared at her greedily. His wife must have told him to watch carefully how she was looking and behaving. For the benefit of Monsieur Larroque’s coachman Thérèse instinctively assumed that smile that made people say: “Never mind whether she is pretty or plain, you cannot resist her charm.” ”

“ Indeed, would Bernard even listen to her? He paced the long, low, damp room, and the flooring, which was rotting here and there, creaked beneath his steps. He did not look at his wife,—he was bursting with a speech he had long since prepared. And Thérèse, too, knew what she was going to say. The simplest solution is always the one we never think of. She would say, ‘I am going to disappear, Bernard. Don’t worry about me. I will go out into the night at once, if you like. I am not afraid of the forest or the darkness. They know me: we know each other. ”

“ Thresk's bearer lit a fire and prepared dinner while Thresk wandered outside the door and smoked. He looked across a plain to a long high ridge, where once a city had struggled. Its deserted towers and crumbling walls still crowned the height and made a habitation for beasts and birds. But they were quite hidden now and the sharp line of the ridge was softened. Halfway between the old city and the bungalow a cluster of bright lights shone upon the plain and the red tongues of a fire flickered in the open. Thresk was in no hurry to go back to the bungalow. ”

“ On Bernard’s advice Thérèse took long walks: “Exercise is the best digestive,” he would say.
She was no longer afraid of Argelouse: it seemed as though the pines were moving further off, opening their ranks, and signalling to her to make her escape.
One evening Bernard had said to her: “I am only asking you to wait until Anne’s marriage: we must be seen in company once more by the whole neighbourhood: after that you will be free.” She had not been able to sleep during the following night: her joy made her restless and her eyes would not close. ”

“ Thresk! How many women endure the thing that is because it is? Even to leave your husband you want a trifle of spirit. And what if your spirit's broken? What if you are cowed? What if you live in terror day and night?"
"Yes. I am a fool," said Thresk, and he sat down again. "There are two more questions I want to ask. Did you ever talk to Stella"—the Christian name slipped naturally from him and only Jane Repton of the two remarked that he had used it—"of that incident in the library at Agra?" ”

“ Thérèse realised that she too might have been wiped out of existence, and later on not even her little daughter Marie would have been allowed to find in an album the likeness of one who had brought her into the world. At that moment Marie was already asleep in a room at Argelouse, where Thérèse would arrive late that evening: she would listen in the darkness to the murmur of that childish slumber; she would lean over the bed and her lips would drink in the sweetness of that sleeping life like a draught of clear water. ”

“ Thresk, watching her as she lived through again those desperate minutes, was carried back to Chitipur and seemed to be looking into that tent. He had a dreadful picture before his eyes of a hunted woman rushing wildly from table to table, with a white, quivering face and lips which babbled incoherently and feverish hands which darted out nervously, over-setting books and ornaments—in a vain search for a box of cartridges wherewith to kill herself. ”