continually seen in acts of
considerateness that struck his companions as moral eccentricity. »Deronda would
have been first-rate if he had had more ambition« - was a frequent remark about
him. But how could a fellow push his way properly when he objected to swop for
his own advantage, knocked under by choice when he was within an inch of
victory, and, unlike the great Clive, would rather be the calf than the butcher?
It was a mistake, however, to suppose that Deronda had not his share of
ambition: we know he had suffered keenly from the belief that there was a tinge
of dishonour in his lot; but there are some cases, and his was one of them, in
which the sense of injury breeds - not the will to inflict injuries and climb
over them as a ladder, but - a hatred of all injury. He had his flashes of
fierceness, and could hit out upon occasion, but the occasions were not always
what might have been expected. For in what related to himself his resentful
impulses had been early checked by a mastering affectionateness. Love has a
habit of saying »Never mind« to angry self, who, sitting down for the nonce in
the lower place, by-and-by gets used to it. So it was that as Deronda approached
manhood his feeling for Sir Hugo, while it was getting more and more mixed with
criticism, was gaining in that sort of allowance which reconciles criticism with
tenderness. The dear old beautiful home and everything within it, Lady Mallinger
and her little ones included, were consecrated for the youth as they had been
for the boy - only with a certain difference of light on the objects. The
altar-piece was no longer miraculously perfect, painted under infallible
guidance, but the human hand discerned in the work was appealing to a reverent
tenderness safer from the gusts of discovery. Certainly Deronda's ambition, even
in his spring-time, lay exceptionally aloof from conspicuous, vulgar triumph,
and from other ugly forms of boyish energy; perhaps because he was early
impassioned by ideas, and burned his fire on those heights. One may spend a good
deal of energy in disliking and resisting what others pursue, and a boy who is
fond of somebody else's pencil-case may not be more energetic than another who
is fond of giving his own pencil-case away. Still, it was not Deronda's
disposition to escape from ugly scenes: he was more inclined to sit through them
and take care of the fellow least able to take care of himself. It had helped to