Page:Weird Tales volume 28 number 03.djvu/32

298 knew, nor could any discover; for the next day he was found in the great hall raving mad, and the people said that Helene's curse was a potent one, that already it had wreaked vengeance on the one who had wronged her most.

"From that day, the château was called Rougemont. The d'Harcourts were all dead and the place fell into other hands. Then there grew up the rumor that the château was haunted, that the fair Helene roamed through its halls, cut off from her lover, and doomed to stay within these walls by Black George's curse."

silent, Wrexler and I looked at the portrait. My own feelings were in a turmoil. It had been a ghost's lips that had touched me last night; yet surely no ghosts could have been so beautiful or seemed so real.

Wrexler turned to me, "It would be the curse that has always been upon me that when I fell in love it would be with a ghost!" His eyes were vivid, shining brightly in his pale face. "I knew when I saw her on the stairway that I loved her."

"There is a rumor," said de Lacy, "that the man who sees the fair Helene will meet with some misadventure, unless she gives him a kiss. Then he is protected from her wrath."

I started. Wrexler smiled, "She kissed me with her eyes. I am not afraid."

"The fair Helene makes men suffer to make up for the wrong Black George did her. For years she has not been seen at Rougemont. Last night when you described her, I was afraid. My lord," de Lacy turned to me, "send your friend away. If she only looked at him and smiled, there is a grave and deadly danger for him, more deadly because it may be unexplainable. Men upon whom the fair Helene has smiled have met strange deaths."

As Wrexler looked up at the portrait, an inward light illumined his countenance. "I am not afraid," he repeated.

"There are many deaths. There is the death of the spirit as well as that of the body. I beg you to go while there is time, friend of my lord." There was real feeling in de Lacy's voice.

I too felt afraid for Wrexler. The strange, unworldly feeling he had always had, the pulling toward something he knew not what, made me doubly fearful. Had the fair Helene been calling him all this time, across the world? For myself I had no fear. She had kissed me, and besides, even death at her hands would have been preferable to never seeing her again. In these last few minutes I had realized that I too was in love with Helene, that I could hardly wait for the night, in hopes that she might visit me again.

Resolutely I put my own feelings in the background, for at the moment Wrexler was of paramount importance. If there was anything in de Lacy's story—and from my own experience I was sure there was—Wrexler was in danger. I turned to him. "If anything happened to you, I could never forgive myself. Perhaps you'd better go. I could arrange a trip for you, and later—meet you."

Somehow de Lacy seemed one of us. I had no hesitancy in speaking before him. He seemed a part of my new life. With the strange suddenness that comes on rare occasions, we were already friends.

Wrexler looked at me, then back at the portrait. Helene d'Harcourt, her red hair gleaming, smiled down upon us. Before he spoke, I knew what he would say, because in his place I would have said the same, "Unless you kick me out, I want to stay."