In one of their many conversations since the beginnings of the case, both brief and long, Lady Jane had said something that had rankled in Lenox’s mind. Specifically, she had said he had a responsibility to inform James, the young footman, about Prue Smith’s true actions. Her argument was that it would save him suffering; it would allow the young man to make a clean break with the past, even if his immediate reaction was of deeper grief. The truth would bring him peace. Or at any rate, he wouldn’t live a half-life, unwilling to love any girl as he loved the ideal of Prue.
In response, Lenox had said that James would indeed be devastated, but the devastation wouldn’t dissolve as quickly as she thought. There would be no answers about Prue’s behavior that would satisfy him. While he might forget her sooner if he was told about the maid’s affairs, he might also pore over them endlessly, withering away in jealousy, self-doubt, and the strange mixture of hatred and love that devolves upon someone in grief who learns an unpleasant fact about the object of his worship.
And this quick argument-not even an argument but a considered exchange of ideas-had remained with Lenox longer than he might have thought.
Then he found, as so often happens, that the subject on his mind was confronted by the situation itself. Soon after Edmund left, James knocked on the door and was admitted to the library while Lenox was deciding what to do next.
This was really too much, Lenox felt. Grief, he forgave. But the young man was dogging his footsteps and in a very real way impeding the progress of the case. Perhaps the time had come to follow Lady Jane’s advice.
Lenox had been sitting at his desk, and he stood up when James came in. The young man was extremely pale, and because his hair was black the contrast was shocking. His face seemed even gaunter than it had, and his hawkish features, in particular his long melancholy nose, had grown pronounced with lack of sleep and food.
“James,” said Lenox, gesturing toward the chair in front of his desk.
“Mr. Lenox, I truly am sorry, sir, only-only-I can’t get it away from me.”
“James?”
“Like her ghost-not a real ghost, mind you-but like a ghost, all the same.”
Lenox looked at him with sympathy. “I understand.”
The young man laid his head in his hands and moaned. “It’s agony,” he said.
“I’m so very sorry, James. I truly am. She must have been a remarkable girl, if you love her so.”
“A gem, sir,” said James, barely lifting his head to speak.
Here was the moment. Time to tell him. Lenox was on the verge of thinking that Lady Jane had been right. The young man looked as if he would pine away into nothingness. Why, he must have lost ten pounds already.
“James-”
The young man looked up, and Lenox was very nearly prepared to do it, to reveal Prue’s betrayals of him with both Deck and Claude. But at the moment his will failed.
It was not that Lenox reconsidered Lady Jane’s position, or even that he considered anything at all. It was an entirely instinctive decision. Even if the suffering would be greater through the years this way, he hadn’t the heart to be so cruel, to dash this young man’s certainty, his grief, his true pledged love, because it was the right thing to do.
Here was a characteristic that Lenox came up against in himself sometimes, which even vexed him in rare instances. It could be cowardice or compassion; he cared little what it was called. It was in him, and that was all.
He went around the desk and put his hand on James’s shoulder.
“I know it seems as if you’ve lost the only girl you’ll ever love,” he said, “and I know it seems impossible that your life will ever be happy and contented again, and I know each hour seems blacker than the last. I know all these things. But don’t become black inside. You may think you’re left with nothing, but you still have your memories of her, and you have time. Sorrow is all very well but, as the church says, darkness never lasts, and light always comes. Even when it doesn’t seem so, my boy.”
James lifted his head. “I suppose,” he said. “I suppose.”
“I promise.” In truth Lenox didn’t know. But he made the promise anyway. “You must try to live, James.”
“Aye.”
“It will be all right.”
“There’s no more I can do, sir? Nothing?”
“I’m afraid not. But we’ll get him, sooner or later. I promise that, too.”
James stood up, bowed slightly, and walked out of the room without saying anything. Lenox sighed and leaned over with his hands on the desk, looking out at the snow on the sidewalks and the people walking along, and eventually he saw James come out, looking very dark against the white of the landscape in his heavy black coat.