"Translate for Her, She's Only the Nursemaid," the Countess Said — The Ambassador Bowed to Her
Chapter 10
Theme:
Font Size:
24px
Then she turned to the table and said in English, so that everyone should know what had been done in their name:"My lady, my lord, I beg your pardon. Mr. Pomfret told His Excellency that Russia lost her capital because she could not keep it, that the Emperor was slow to make peace, and that the late Countess fled Moscow because she could not be got out. Lord Stanwick said no such thing. I have told His Excellency what Lord Stanwick said."There was a silence in which you could hear the candles.Mr. Pomfret said, "That is outrageous," and looked at his glass as if it had betrayed him.The Countess said in a voice like broken china, "Marlow, you forget yourself. Mr. Pomfret is a gentleman and a linguist. You are the nursemaid.""Madam," said Count Zabelin. He said it in French, and he said it to the Countess, and he had stood up. "Madam, I have sat at your table and been told in my Emperor's tongue that my country ran and my wife ran, and I have smiled because I am an envoy and I am your guest. I am no longer required to smile. The young woman is correct in every word. Her Russian is better than my interpreter's, and I think better than mine, for she speaks it as my mother did." He turned. "Mademoiselle, you are called Marlow?""Theodora Marlow, Your Excellency."The Count's hand went flat on the table. "Marlow," he said. "Richard Marlow of the embassy at Petersburg?""My father, sir. He died in November of '16."The Count was silent for so long that Louisa, who could bear anything but silence, said, "Did you have a rabbit?"Nobody heard her. Count Zabelin had come round the end of his chair."Lady Stanwick," he said, "and gentlemen: in September of the year '12, my wife was in Moscow, and she was with child, and she could not be got out because every horse in the city had been taken, and the French were in the Tverskaya, and the roofs were coming down. A young Englishman, a courier carrying letters to our army, who had no business in Moscow and every reason to leave it, put my wife into his own carriage and drove her out through the fire himself, and gave her his own cloak, and went back for her maid. My daughter was born in the spring because of him. I never met him. I wrote to him; he wrote back that any man would have done it. Then the peace came, and my duties took me elsewhere, and I was told a year ago that he had died and that there were debts, and I did not know where to send what I owed."