<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN>
<h1>HUNTINGTOWER</h1>
<h2>BY JOHN BUCHAN</h2>
<hr/>
<h2><SPAN name="PROLOGUE" id="PROLOGUE"></SPAN>PROLOGUE</h2>
<p>The girl came into the room with a darting
movement like a swallow, looked round her
with the same birdlike quickness, and then ran
across the polished floor to where a young man sat
on a sofa with one leg laid along it.</p>
<p>"I have saved you this dance, Quentin," she said,
pronouncing the name with a pretty staccato. "You
must be so lonely not dancing, so I will sit with you.
What shall we talk about?"</p>
<p>The young man did not answer at once, for his
gaze was held by her face. He had never dreamed
that the gawky and rather plain little girl whom he
had romped with long ago in Paris would grow into
such a being. The clean delicate lines of her figure,
the exquisite pure colouring of hair and skin, the
charming young arrogance of the eyes—this was
beauty, he reflected, a miracle, a revelation. Her
virginal fineness and her dress, which was the tint
of pale fire, gave her the air of a creature of ice
and flame.</p>
<p>"About yourself, please, Saskia," he said. "Are
you happy now that you are a grown-up lady?"</p>
<p>"Happy!" Her voice had a thrill in it like music,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_12" id="Page_12"></SPAN></span>
frosty music. "The days are far too short. I
grudge the hours when I must sleep. They say it
is sad for me to make my d�but in a time of war.
But the world is very kind to me, and after all it is
a victorious war for our Russia. And listen to this,
Quentin. To-morrow I am to be allowed to begin
nursing at the Alexander Hospital. What do you
think of that?"</p>
<p>The time was January, 1916, and the place a
room in the great Nirski Palace. No hint of war,
no breath from the snowy streets, entered that
curious chamber where Prince Peter Nirski kept
some of the chief of his famous treasures. It was
notable for its lack of drapery and upholstering—only
a sofa or two and a few fine rugs on the cedar
floor. The walls were of a green marble veined
like malachite, the ceiling was of darker marble
inlaid with white intaglios. Scattered everywhere
were tables and cabinets laden with celadon china,
and carved jade, and ivories, and shimmering Persian
and Rhodian vessels. In all the room there
was scarcely anything of metal and no touch of
gilding or bright colour. The light came from
green alabaster censers, and the place swam in a
cold green radiance like some cavern below the sea.
The air was warm and scented, and though it was
very quiet there, a hum of voices and the strains
of dance music drifted to it from the pillared corridor
in which could be seen the glare of lights from
the great ballroom beyond.</p>
<p>The young man had a thin face with lines of suffering
round the mouth and eyes. The warm room<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_13" id="Page_13"></SPAN></span>
had given him a high colour, which increased his
air of fragility. He felt a little choked by the
place, which seemed to him for both body and mind
a hot-house, though he knew very well that the
Nirski Palace on this gala evening was in no way
typical of the land or its masters. Only a week ago
he had been eating black bread with its owner in
a hut on the Volhynian front.</p>
<p>"You have become amazing, Saskia," he said.
"I won't pay my old playfellow compliments; besides,
you must be tired of them. I wish you happiness
all the day long like a fairy-tale Princess.
But a crock like me can't do much to help you to it.
The service seems to be the wrong way round, for
here you are wasting your time talking to me."</p>
<p>She put her hand on his. "Poor Quentin! Is
the leg very bad?"</p>
<p>He laughed. "Oh, no. It's mending famously.
I'll be able to get about without a stick in another
month, and then you've got to teach me all the new
dances."</p>
<p>The jigging music of a two-step floated down the
corridor. It made the young man's brow contract,
for it brought to him a vision of dead faces in the
gloom of a November dusk. He had once had a
friend who used to whistle that air, and he had seen
him die in the Hollebeke mud. There was something
<i>macabre</i> in the tune.... He was surely
morbid this evening, for there seemed something
<i>macabre</i> about the house, the room, the dancing, all
Russia.... These last days he had suffered from
a sense of calamity impending, of a dark curtain<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_14" id="Page_14"></SPAN></span>
drawing down upon a splendid world. They didn't
agree with him at the Embassy, but he could not get
rid of the notion.</p>
<p>The girl saw his sudden abstraction.</p>
<p>"What are you thinking about?" she asked. It
had been her favourite question as a child.</p>
<p>"I was thinking that I rather wished you were
still in Paris."</p>
<p>"But why?"</p>
<p>"Because I think you would be safer."</p>
<p>"Oh, what nonsense, Quentin dear! Where
should I be safe if not in my own Russia, where I
have friends—oh, so many, and tribes and tribes
of relations? It is France and England that are
unsafe with the German guns grumbling at their
doors.... My complaint is that my life is too
cosseted and padded. I am too secure, and I do
not want to be secure."</p>
<p>The young man lifted a heavy casket from a table
at his elbow. It was of dark green imperial jade,
with a wonderfully carved lid. He took off the lid
and picked up three small oddments of ivory—a
priest with a beard, a tiny soldier and a draught-ox.
Putting the three in a triangle, he balanced the jade
box on them.</p>
<p>"Look, Saskia! If you were living inside that
box you would think it very secure. You would
note the thickness of the walls and the hardness of
the stone, and you would dream away in a peaceful
green dusk. But all the time it would be held up
by trifles—brittle trifles."</p>
<p>She shook her head. "You do not understand.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_15" id="Page_15"></SPAN></span>
You cannot understand. We are a very old and
strong people with roots deep, deep in the earth."</p>
<p>"Please God you are right," he said. "But,
Saskia, you know that if I can ever serve you, you
have only to command me. Now I can do no more
for you than the mouse for the lion—at the beginning
of the story. But the story had an end, you
remember, and some day it may be in my power to
help you. Promise to send for me."</p>
<p>The girl laughed merrily. "The King of Spain's
daughter," she quoted,</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i4q">"Came to visit me,<br/></span>
<span class="i4">And all for the love<br/></span>
<span class="i4">Of my little nut-tree."<br/></span></div>
</div>
<p>The other laughed also, as a young man in the
uniform of the Preobrajenski Guard approached to
claim the girl. "Even a nut-tree may be a shelter
in a storm," he said.</p>
<p>"Of course I promise, Quentin," she said. "<i>Au
revoir.</i> Soon I will come and take you to supper,
and we will talk of nothing but nut-trees."</p>
<p>He watched the two leave the room, her gown
glowing like a tongue of fire in the shadowy archway.
Then he slowly rose to his feet, for he
thought that for a little he would watch the dancing.
Something moved beside him, and he turned
in time to prevent the jade casket from crashing to
the floor. Two of the supports had slipped.</p>
<p>He replaced the thing on its proper table and
stood silent for a moment.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_16" id="Page_16"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>"The priest and the soldier gone, and only the
beast of burden left.... If I were inclined to be
superstitious, I should call that a dashed bad omen."<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_17" id="Page_17"></SPAN></span></p>
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