It was very cruel for Philip that he should be shrunk from, because of an unjustifiable vindictiveness toward his father,—poor Philip, whom some people would shrink from only because he was deformed.
In a mind charged with an eager purpose and an unsatisfied vindictiveness, there is no room for new feelings; Mr Tulliver did not want spiritual consolation—he wanted to shake off the degradation of debt, and to have his revenge.
It was still possible, even in that later time of anti-Catholic preaching, for people to hold many pagan ideas, and believe themselves good church-people, notwithstanding; so we need hardly feel any surprise at the fact that Mr Tulliver, though a regular church-goer, recorded his vindictiveness on the fly-leaf of his Bible.
If Mr Tulliver had ever seriously injured or thwarted the attorney, Wakem would not have refused him the distinction of being a special object of his vindictiveness.
Since, thus, the prevision of his own unending bliss could not nullify the bitter savors of irritated jealousy and vindictiveness, it is the less surprising that the probability of a transient earthly bliss for other persons, when he himself should have entered into glory, had not a potently sweetening effect.
He knew Tough Bill's vindictiveness.
I expected then people to be more of a piece than I do now, and I was distressed to find so much vindictiveness in so charming a creature.
True he had flung Hook's arm to the crocodile, but even this and the increased insecurity of life to which it led, owing to the crocodile's pertinacity, hardly account for a vindictiveness so relentless and malignant.
