But before she went to join her husband in the Belgic capital, Mrs.
Crawley made an expedition into England, leaving behind her her little
son upon the continent, under the care of her French maid.
The parting between Rebecca and the little Rawdon did not cause either
party much pain. She had not, to say truth, seen much of the young
gentleman since his birth. After the amiable fashion of French mothers,
she had placed him out at nurse in a village in the neighbourhood of
Paris, where little Rawdon passed the first months of his life, not
unhappily, with a numerous family of foster-brothers in wooden shoes.
His father would ride over many a time to see him here, and the elder
Rawdon's paternal heart glowed to see him rosy and dirty, shouting
lustily, and happy in the making of mud-pies under the superintendence
of the gardener's wife, his nurse.
Rebecca did not care much to go and see the son and heir. Once he
spoiled a new dove-coloured pelisse of hers. He preferred his nurse's
caresses to his mamma's, and when finally he quitted that jolly nurse
and almost parent, he cried loudly for hours. He was only consoled by
his mother's promise that he should return to his nurse the next day;
indeed the nurse herself, who probably would have been pained at the
parting too, was told that the child would immediately be restored to
her, and for some time awaited quite anxiously his return.
In fact, our friends may be said to have been among the first of that
brood of hardy English adventurers who have subsequently invaded the
Continent and swindled in all the capitals of Europe. The respect in
those happy days of 1817-18 was very great for the wealth and honour of
Britons. They had not then learned, as I am told, to haggle for
bargains with the pertinacity which now distinguishes them. The great
cities of Europe had not been as yet open to the enterprise of our
rascals. And whereas there is now hardly a town of France or Italy in
which you shall not see some noble countryman of our own, with that
happy swagger and insolence of demeanour which we carry everywhere,
swindling inn-landlords, passing fictitious cheques upon credulous
bankers, robbing coach-makers of their carriages, goldsmiths of their
trinkets, easy travellers of their money at cards, even public
libraries of their books--thirty years ago you needed but to be a Milor
Anglais, travelling in a private carriage, and credit was at your hand
wherever you chose to seek it, and gentlemen, instead of cheating, were
cheated. It was not for some weeks after the Crawleys' departure that
the landlord of the hotel which they occupied during their residence at
Paris found out the losses which he had sustained: not until Madame
Marabou, the milliner, made repeated visits with her little bill for
articles supplied to Madame Crawley; not until Monsieur Didelot from
Boule d'Or in the Palais Royal had asked half a dozen times whether
cette charmante Miladi who had bought watches and bracelets of him was
de retour. It is a fact that even the poor gardener's wife, who had
nursed madame's child, was never paid after the first six months for
that supply of the milk of human kindness with which she had furnished
the lusty and healthy little Rawdon. No, not even the nurse was
paid--the Crawleys were in too great a hurry to remember their trifling
debt to her. As for the landlord of the hotel, his curses against the
English nation were violent for the rest of his natural life. He asked
all travellers whether they knew a certain Colonel Lor Crawley--avec sa
femme une petite dame, tres spirituelle. "Ah, Monsieur!" he would
add--"ils m'ont affreusement vole." It was melancholy to hear his
accents as he spoke of that catastrophe.