Vanity Fair - Page 308/573

Rebecca's object in her journey to London was to effect a kind of

compromise with her husband's numerous creditors, and by offering them

a dividend of ninepence or a shilling in the pound, to secure a return

for him into his own country. It does not become us to trace the steps

which she took in the conduct of this most difficult negotiation; but,

having shown them to their satisfaction that the sum which she was

empowered to offer was all her husband's available capital, and having

convinced them that Colonel Crawley would prefer a perpetual retirement

on the Continent to a residence in this country with his debts

unsettled; having proved to them that there was no possibility of money

accruing to him from other quarters, and no earthly chance of their

getting a larger dividend than that which she was empowered to offer,

she brought the Colonel's creditors unanimously to accept her

proposals, and purchased with fifteen hundred pounds of ready money

more than ten times that amount of debts.

Mrs. Crawley employed no lawyer in the transaction. The matter was so

simple, to have or to leave, as she justly observed, that she made the

lawyers of the creditors themselves do the business. And Mr. Lewis

representing Mr. Davids, of Red Lion Square, and Mr. Moss acting for

Mr. Manasseh of Cursitor Street (chief creditors of the Colonel's),

complimented his lady upon the brilliant way in which she did business,

and declared that there was no professional man who could beat her.

Rebecca received their congratulations with perfect modesty; ordered a

bottle of sherry and a bread cake to the little dingy lodgings where

she dwelt, while conducting the business, to treat the enemy's lawyers:

shook hands with them at parting, in excellent good humour, and

returned straightway to the Continent, to rejoin her husband and son

and acquaint the former with the glad news of his entire liberation.

As for the latter, he had been considerably neglected during his

mother's absence by Mademoiselle Genevieve, her French maid; for that

young woman, contracting an attachment for a soldier in the garrison of

Calais, forgot her charge in the society of this militaire, and little

Rawdon very narrowly escaped drowning on Calais sands at this period,

where the absent Genevieve had left and lost him.

And so, Colonel and Mrs. Crawley came to London: and it is at their

house in Curzon Street, May Fair, that they really showed the skill

which must be possessed by those who would live on the resources above

named.