"Nay, if you knew how we have travelled and slept at night, you would allow the more pressing need to be for a bath and change of clothing," Ivor said, rather drily. "Well, since you can assure me that 'tis all good news, I will wait one half-hour."
"And then I'll read it to you," suggested Roy. "It isn't so very interesting. More than half is from my grandmother to my father; and you know how she writes always of the things which nobody wishes to hear. And the rest is from Molly to me. But as for Polly, my grandmother does not say much—does she?" —with a look at Mrs. Baron— "Save only that Polly is well."
[CHAPTER XVIII]
ALTERED LOOKS
THE letter from Mrs. Fairbank to Colonel Baron, which Roy undertook to read aloud to Denham, though somewhat verbose, was not without passages of interest.
During the last four years, since the Barons had left their own country for an enforced residence abroad, much had happened in European history. Most notable among famous events had been the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, which crippled for half a century to come the Naval power of France.
For three years at least previous to that date, England had been kept on tenter-hooks of expectation, incessantly dreading a French invasion. Napoleon had talked largely of such an invasion, and had openly made preparations for it, on no mean scale. England also had made ready for it, had feared it, had laughed at it. And at the last, partly through Continental complications, causing Napoleon to withdraw most of the great military force which had long sat at Boulogne, waiting for a safe chance of crossing the Channel, but much more through the magnificent and crushing victory of Nelson, in the course of which he received his death-wound, England escaped it.
She escaped it by a narrow margin. But for Napoleon's pressing need of more soldiers elsewhere, and but for this crowning victory of Nelson's, the attempt might have been made. As everybody knows, Nelson chased the combined fleets of France and Spain across the Atlantic to the West Indies and back again. And had he, by one little slip, missed finding those fleets at the critical moment, a landing of French troops might actually have taken place.
Whether Napoleon could have done more than land his troops upon the coast is a question difficult now to answer. That he could ever have conquered Great Britain is absolutely inconceivable, despite his own boastful assurance on that point, which lasted, or appeared to last, to the end of his life.
However, these fears were at an end. Napoleon's career of conquest on land continued unchecked; but at sea the flag of Great Britain reigned supreme. Nelson's body lay in St. Paul's Cathedral; but before he died he had done his work. He had saved his country from the iron heel of Napoleon. So Mrs. Fairbank's letter contained no further descriptions of invasion scares, such as she would have had to write two or three years earlier, though it did contain certain references to the Emperor, not too cautiously worded for a letter on its road to France. Some past and futile hopes of a peace between England and France were alluded to also.