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.