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George Eliot: Tessa

Florence saw Tito Melema ever making his way upward from the day when he found himself adrift after shipwreck, and was carried to the market by the omnipresent Bratti, merchant and huckster, and introduced to breakfast and a kiss from pretty little Tessa, and passed under the deft had of the wonder-working barber-philosopher Nello. That shrewd craftsman with edged tools--razor or tongue--introduced him to the bright and powerful folk who frequented his shop as if it were a club, and brought him to the notice of the blind scholar Bardo, who needed just such a clever young student as Tito for a helper. From that his path was easy to the confidence of the great; Latin secretary to the state, embassies to Rome, everything was his, even to the envy of Niccolo Machiavelli. The world saw only the dazzling success; there were a few who marked "the change that came from the final departure of moral youthfulness," who saw the perfidies and desertions of the dexterous and facile Greek, the baseness that smiles and triumphs; who knew how he had left to slavery the adoptive father who had rescued him and made him what he was, how he proved false to the memory of Romola's father, who set him on his way to triumph in Florence, how he betrayed his great patrons, how he deceived poor Tessa, that "sweet, pouting, innocent, round thing," how he threw away the great treasure of Romola's love, and how his only bitter thought was that a timely, well-devised falsehood might have saved him from every fatal consequence.

Over against the figure of the man she married stands Romola, "fair as the Florentine lily before it got quarrelsome and turned red," as the rhapsodic Nello described her. Her contempt of all injustice and meanness, the noble serenity with which she accepted, though not without inward struggle, all that life and duty brought her, the willing service she rendered her father, her husband, the poor, the sufferers in the plague. Tito's abandoned father, even Tessa, her rival to the title of wife, the mother of Tito's children, the majestic self-possession which at the slightest touch on the fibers of affection or pity could become passionate with tenderness--all this justified her godfather, Bernardo del Nero, in his exhortation to her father: "Remember, Bardo, thou hast a rare gem of thy own; take care no man gets it who is not likely to pay a worthy price. That pretty Greek has a lithe sleekness about him that seems marvelously fitted for slipping easily into any nest he fixes his eyes upon."

But he that smiles and triumphs does not always triumph to the end. He is sometimes found out. So it was with Tito. He had made the last preparation for departure to a larger field of action. Pursued in the night by a crowd of angry men, he barely had time to leap from a bridge into the Arno. A long swim in the darkness--in the tumult of his blood he could only feel vaguely that he was safe and might land. But where? The current was having its way with him; he hardly knew where he was; exhaustion was bringing on the dreamy state that precedes unconsciousness.

But now there were eyes that discerned him--aged, strong for the distance. Baldassare--his father--looking up blankly from the search to which his poverty had led him, had seen a white object coming along the stream--could that be any fortunate chance for him? He looked and looked till the object gathered form; then he leaned forward with a start as he sat among the rank green stems, and his eyes seemed to be filled with a new light--yet he only watched--motionless. Something was being brought to him. The next instant a man's body was cast violently on the grass two yards from him, and he started forward like a panther, clutching the velvet tunic as he fell forward on the body and flashed a look in the man's face. Dead--was he dead? The eyes were rigid. But no, it could not be--justice had brought him. Men looked dead sometimes, and yet the life came back to them. Baldassare did not feel feeble in that moment. He knew just what he could do. He got his large fingers within the neck of the tunic and held them there, kneeling on one knee beside the body and watching the face. In his eyes there was only fierceness.

Rigid--rigid still. Those eyes with the half-fallen lids were locked against vengeance. Could it be that he was dead? Surely at last the eyelids were quivering; the eyes were no longer rigid. There was a vibrating light in them--they opened wide. "Ah yes! You see me--you know me!"

Tito knew him; but he did not know whether it was life or death that had brought him into the presence of his injured father. It might be death--and death might mean this chill gloom with the face of the hideous past hanging over him forever.

But Baldassare's only dread was lest the young limbs should escape him. He pressed his knuckles against the round throat and knelt upon the chest with all the force of his aged frame. Let death come now!