For there were ways, apart from the ways of journalism, in which Jewdwine could be noble still.  And still, as he watched Rickman’s departing back, the back that he seemed doomed to know so well, he said to himself—­

“He’s magnificent, but I can’t afford him.”

CHAPTER LXIX

In all this his history had only repeated itself.  When six years ago he had turned his back on Rickman’s he had made it inevitable that he should turn his back on Jewdwine now.  On each occasion his behaviour had provoked the same melancholy admission, from Jewdwine—­“He is magnificent, but I can’t afford him”; from Isaac Rickman—­“I can’t afford to pay your price, my boy.”  The incredible thing was that Jewdwine should have been brought to say it.  Jewdwine was changed; but Rickman was the same Rickman who had swung the shop door behind him, unmoved by the separation from his salary.

But after all he could only keep half of that rash vow he had made to himself on the way to Hampstead.  He must give up the Editor of Metropolis; but he could not give up Horace Jewdwine.  It was not the first time he had been compelled to admit the distinction which Maddox for decency’s sake had insisted on.  When it came to the point, as now, he found himself insisting on it with even greater emphasis than Maddox.  He knew that in his soul Jewdwine still loved and worshipped what was admirable, that in his soul he would have given anything to recall his injustice to young Paterson.  But young Paterson was too great to have need either of Jewdwine or of him.  Young Paterson had his genius to console him.  His profounder pity was for the man who had inflicted such awful injuries on himself; the great man who had made himself mean; the spiritual person who had yielded to a material tyranny; the incorruptible person who had sold his soul, who only realized the value of his soul now that he had sold it.

And yet he knew that there could be nothing more sundering than such meanness, such corruptibility as Jewdwine’s.  Their friendship could never be the same.  There was a certain relief in that.  There could never be any hypocrisy, any illusion in their relations now.  And nobody knew that better than Jewdwine.  Well, the very fact that Jewdwine had still desired and chosen that sad-hearted, clear-eyed communion argued a certain greatness in him.

Therefore he resolved to spare him.  It would cost him the friendship of better men than he; but that could not be helped.  They must continue to think that he had sold or at any rate lent himself at interest to Jewdwine.  Honour debarred him from all explanation and defence, an honour so private and personal that it must remain unsuspected by the world.  In the beginning he had made himself almost unpleasantly conspicuous by the purity of his literary morals; his innocence had been a hair-lifting spectacle even to honest journalists.  And now the fame he would have among them was the fame of a literary prostitute, without a prostitute’s wages.