O'Brian Patrick - Aub-Mat 08 - The Ionian Mission

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The Ionian Mission
CHAPTER ONE
Marriage was once represented as a field of battle rather than a bed of roses, and
perhaps there are some who may still support this view; but just as Dr Maturin had made a
far more unsuitable match than most, so he set about dealing with the situation in a far
more compendious, peaceable and efficacious way than the great majority of husbands.
He had pursued his strikingly beautiful, spirited, fashionable wife for years and years
before marrying her in mid-Channel aboard a man-of-war: for so many years indeed that
he had become a confirmed bachelor at last, too old a dog to give up his tricks of smoking
tobacco in bed, playing his 'cello at odd untimely moments, dissecting anything that
interested him, even in the drawing-room; too old to be taught to shave regularly, to
change his linen, or to wash when he did not feel the need - an impossible husband. He
was not house-trained; and although he made earnest attempts at the beginning of their
marriage he soon perceived that in time the strain must damage their relationship, all the
more so since Diana was as intransigent as himself and far more apt to fly into a passion
about such things as a pancreas in the drawer of the bedside table or orange marmalade
ground into the Aubusson. And then again his deeply-ingrained habits of secrecy (for he
was an intelligence-agent as well as a physician) made him even more unsuited for
domestic life, which withers in the presence of reserve. He therefore gradually retired to
the rooms he had long retained in an old-fashioned comfortable shabby inn called the
Grapes, in the liberties of the Savoy, leaving Diana in the handsome modern house in Half
Moon Street, a house shining with fresh white paint and new-furnished with elegant but
fragile satinwood.
It was in no way a parting; there was no sort of violence or ill-will or disagreement about
Stephen Maturin's fading away from the intense social life of Half Moon Street to the dim,
foggy lane by the Thames, where he could more easily attend the meetings of the Royal
Society, the College of Surgeons, or the entomological or ornithological societies that
interested him so very much more than Diana's card-parties and routs, and where he
could more safely carry out some of the delicate business that fell to his lot as a member
of the naval intelligence department, business that necessarily had to be kept from the
knowledge of his wife. It was not a parting in any sense of unkindness, but a mere
geographical separation, one so slight that Stephen usually covered it every morning,
walking up through the Green Park to breakfast with his wife, most often in her bedroom,
she being a late riser; while he nearly always appeared at her frequent dinner-parties,
playing the part of host to admiration, for he could be as smooth and complaisant as the
most civilized of her guests so long as he was not required to keep it up too long. In any
case Diana's father and her first husband were serving officers and all her life she had
been accustomed to separation. She was always delighted to see her husband and he to
see her; they never quarrelled now that all reasons for disagreement were gone; and in
fact this was probably the best possible arrangement for a pair with nothing in common
but love and friendship, and a series of strange, surprising, shared adventures.
They never quarrelled, except when Stephen brought up the question of marriage
according to the Roman rite, for their wedding had been performed in the brisk naval
fashion by the captain of HMS Oedipus, an amiable young man and a fine navigator but
no priest; and since Stephen, being of mixed Irish and Catalan parentage, was a Papist he
was a bachelor still as far as the Church was concerned. Yet no persuasion, no kind
words (and harsh ones he dared not use) could move Diana: she did not reason, but
simply and steadily refused. There were times when her obstinacy grieved him, for apart
from his own strong feelings on the matter he seemed to make out some obscure
superstitious dread of a strange sacrament mingled with the general English dislike of
Rome; yet there were also times when it added a certain not wholly disagreeable air of
intrigue to the connection. Not that this ever occurred to the eminently respectable Mrs
Broad of the Grapes, who liked her house to be just so and who would countenance
nothing whatsoever in the roving line, a landlady who would at once turn away any man
she suspected of leading out a wench. Mrs Broad had known Dr Maturin for many years;
she was thoroughly used to him; and when he told her that he meant to stay at the inn she
only stared for a while, amazed that any man born could sleep away from such a ravishing
lady; and then accepted it as 'one of the Doctor's little ways' with perfect calm. Some of his
little ways had indeed been quite surprising in the past, seeing that they ranged from the
quartering of badgers, rescued from a baiting, in her coal-shed to the introduction of
separate limbs and even of whole orphans for dissection when they were in good supply
towards the end of winter; but she had grown used to them little by little. The Doctor's
'cello booming through the night and skeletons in every cupboard were nothing now to Mrs
Broad; and nothing now could astonish her for long. She also thoroughly approved of
Diana, whom she had come to know well during her first startled stay at the inn, where
Stephen had brought her when they landed in England. Mrs Broad liked her for her
beauty, which she Candidly admired, and for her friendliness ('no airs nor graces, and not
above taking a little posset with a person behind the bar') and for her evident affection for
the Doctor. Mrs Maturin was very often at the Grapes, bringing shirts, blue worsted
stockings, shoe-buckles, leaving messages, darting in for small sums of money, for
although Diana was far richer than Stephen she was even more improvident. It seemed a
strange kind of marriage, but Mrs Broad had once seen Mrs Maturin in one of the palace
coaches with Lady Jersey - royal footmen up behind - and she had an indistinct notion that
Diana was 'something at Court', which would naturally prevent her from living like mortal of
ordinary flesh and blood.
Diana had been there still more often in recent days, because the Doctor was going to
sea again with his particular friend Jack Aubrey, a post-captain in the Royal Navy, once
known in the service as Lucky Jack Aubrey for his good fortune in taking prizes but now
so miserably involved in his affairs that he was glad to accept an unenviable temporary
command, the Worcester of seventy-four guns, one of the surviving Forty Thieves, that
notorious set of line-of-battle ships built by contract with a degree of dishonesty in their
scantlings, knees, fastenings - in their whole construction - that excited comment even in a
time of widespread corruption: very strong comment indeed from those who had to take
them to sea. She was to carry him to the Mediterranean, to Admiral Thornton's squadron
and the interminable blockade of the French fleet in Toulon. And since Stephen was to go
to sea, it was obviously necessary that his sea-chest should be prepared. He had packed
it himself on a great many occasions before this and it had always satisfied his modest
needs even when he was a great way from shore, let alone in the Mediterranean, with
Malta or Barcelona only a few hundred miles to leeward, according to the wind; but neither
Diana nor Mrs Broad could bear his method of tossing things in pell-mell, the more fragile
objects wrapped in his stockings, and they both perpetually interfered: tissue-paper,
orderly layers of this and that, neatness, even labels.
The brassbound chest was open now and Dr Maturin was fishing in it, hoping to find his
best neckcloth, the frilled white neckcloth the size of a moderate studding-sail that he was
to put on for Diana's farewell dinner. He fished with a surgical retractor, one of the most
efficient instruments known to science, but nothing did he find; and when at last the steel
claws grated on the bottom he called out, 'Mrs Broad, Mrs Broad, who has hidden my
neckcloth?'
Mrs Broad walked in without ceremony, the neckcloth over her arm, although Stephen
was in his shirt. 'Why, oh why did you take it away?' he cried. 'Have you no bowels, Mrs
Broad?'
'Mrs Maturin said it was to be new-starched,' said Mrs Broad. 'You Avould not like to
have your frill all limp, I am sure.'
'There is nothing I should like better,' muttered Stephen, folding it about him.
'And Mrs Maturin says you are to put on your nice new pumps,' said Mrs Broad. 'Which I
have scratched the soles.'
'I cannot walk to Half Moon Street in new pumps,' said Stephen.
'No, sir,' said Mrs Broad patiently. 'You are to go in a chair, like Mrs M said this morning.
The men have been waiting in the tap this ten minutes past.' Her eye wandered to the
open chest, as neat as an apple-pie not half an hour ago. 'Oh, Dr Maturin, fie,' she cried.
'Oh fie, Doctor, fie.'
'Oh fie, Stephen,' said Diana, tweaking his cravat straight, 'How can you be so intolerably
late? Jagiello has been slavering in the drawing-room this last age, and the others will be
here any minute.'
'There was a mad bull in Smithfield,' said Stephen.
'Does one really have to pass through Smithfield to reach Mayfair?' asked Diana.
'One does not, as you know very well. But I suddenly remembered that I was to call at
Bart's. And listen my dear, you have never been in time in your life, to my certain
knowledge; so I beg you will keep your irony for some more suitable occasion.'
'Why, Stephen, you are as furious as a mad bull yourself, I find,' said Diana, kissing him.
'And to think that I have bought you such a beautiful present. Come upstairs and look at it:
Jagiello can receive any early worms.' As she passed the drawing-room she called in,
'Jagiello, pray do the civil for us if anyone should come: we shall not be a minute.' Jagiello
was almost domesticated at Half Moon Street, an absurdly beautiful young man, an
exceedingly wealthy Lithuanian now attached to the Swedish embassy: he and Stephen
and Jack Aubrey had been imprisoned in France together and they had escaped together,
which accounted for an otherwise unlikely close friendship.
'There,' she said proudly, pointing to her bed, where there stood a gold-mounted
dressing-case that was also a canteen and a backgammon-board: little drawers pulled in
and out, ingenious slides and folding legs transformed it into a wash-hand-stand, a writing
desk, a lectern; and looking-glasses and candle-holders appeared on either side.
'Acushla,' he said, drawing her close, 'this is regal splendour - this is imperial
magnificence. The Physician of the Fleet has nothing finer. I am so grateful, my dear.' And
grateful, infinitely touched he was: while Diana put the gleaming object through its paces,
explaining how it worked and telling him how she had stood over the workmen, bullying
them into finishing it in time - oaths, sweet persuasion, promises until she was hoarse, as
hoarse as a God-damned crow, Stephen cheri - he reflected on her generosity, her
improvidence (rich though she was, she never had any money to spend, and this was far
more than even she could afford), and on her ignorance of naval life, of the damp,
cramped cupboard that a surgeon lived in at sea, even the surgeon of a seventy-four, a
ship of the line: this precious piece of misguided craftsmanship might do very well for a
field-officer, a soldier with a baggage-wagon and a dozen orderlies, but for a sailor it
would have to be wrapped in waxed canvas and struck down into the driest part of the
hold. Or perhaps it might be allowed in the bread-room . . .
'But the shirts, dear Stephen,' she was saying. 'I am absolutely desolated about the
shirts. I could not get the wretched woman to finish them. There are only a dozen here.
But 1 will send the others down by coach. They may catch you in time.'
'God's love,' cried Stephen, 'there is no need, no need at all. A dozen shirts! I have never
had so many at one time since I was breeched. And in any case I need no more than two
for this voyage. Sure, it is almost over before it is begun.'
'I wish you were back already,' said Diana in a low voice. 'I shall miss you so.' And then,
glancing out of the window, 'There is Anne Trevor's chariot. You will not mind her coming,
Stephen? When she heard that Jagiello was dining here she begged and prayed to be
invited, and I had not the heart to say no.'
'Never in life, my dear. I am all for the satisfaction of natural desires, even in Miss Trevor,
even in a Judas-haired rack-renting County Kerry absentee landowner with a Scotch
Anabaptist vulture by way of an agent, or bailiff. Indeed, we might go so far as to leave
them alone for two minutes.'
'It seems a damned odd voyage to me,' said Diana, frowning at the pile of shirts. 'You
never told me how it all came about. And it is all so sudden.'
'In the crisis of a war naval orders are apt to be sudden. But I am just as pleased: I have
some business to deal with in Barcelona, as you know: I should have travelled to the
Mediterranean in any case, Jack or no Jack." This was true as far as it went; but Stephen
had not seen fit to explain the full nature of his business in Barcelona, nor did he now say
that he also had a rendezvous with French royalists no great way from Toulon, a
rendezvous with some gentlemen who were heartily sick of Buonaparte, a rendezvous
that might lead to great things.
'But it was understood that Jack was to have the Blackwater and take her to the North
American station as soon as she was ready,' said Diana. 'He ought never to have been
shoved into a temporary command in that rotten old Worcester. A man of his seniority,
with his fighting record, ought to have been knighted long ago and given a decent ship,
perhaps a squadron of his own. Sophie is perfectly furious: so is Admiral Berkeley, and
Heneage Dundas, and all his service friends.' Diana was well informed about Captain
Aubrey's affairs, he being married to her cousin Sophie and an old friend into the bargain;
but she was not quite as well informed as Stephen, who now said, 'You are aware of
Jack's predicament, of course?"
'Of course I am, Stephen. Pray do not be an ass.' Of course she was: all Captain
Aubrey's acquaintance knew that on coming ashore with his pockets full of French and
Spanish gold he had fallen an even easier prey to the landsharks than most sailors, as
being of a more trusting, sanguine disposition. He had made a disastrous plunge into the
arms of a more than usually rapacious shark and he was now deep in law-suits, with the
possibility of ruin at the end of them.
'I am speaking more of the most recent phase. It seems that he forgot the discretion his
legal advisers urged him to observe, and it seems to them that an absence from the
country is now essential for a while. I forget the details -mayhem, attorneys flying out of a
two-pair-of-stairs window, glass damaged to the extent of several pounds, clerks put in
fear of their lives, blasphemous words, a breach of the King's peace. That is why things
are so sudden. And that is why he accepted this command. It is no more than a
parenthesis in his career.'
'He will come back for the Black-water then, when she is ready? Sophie will be so
happy.'
'Why, as to that, my dear, as to that . . .' Stephen hesitated; and then, overcoming the
passion for reserve that among other things made him so unsuitable a husband, he said,
'The fact of the matter is that he had very great difficulty in getting even this command: his
friends were obliged to make the most pressing representations to those in power,
reminding them of services rendered, of promises made by the late First Lord; and even
with all that he might never have had it if Captain - if a friend had not very handsomely
stood aside. There is some hindrance, some personal grudge in the Admiralty itself; and in
spite of his record he may be disappointed of the Bfackwater, although he has been fitting
her out so long. The parenthesis may close only to find him on shore, eating his heart out
for so much as a rowing-boat that flies the King's flag.'
'I suppose it is his shocking old father,' said Diana.
General Aubrey was an opposition member of Parliament, a vehement enthusiastic
loquacious Radical, a sad handicap to any son serving the Crown, whose ministers
controlled appointment and promotion.
'Sure, that has something to do with the matter,' said Stephen. 'But there is more to it
than that, I believe. Do you know a man called Andrew Wray?'
'Wray of the Treasury? Oh yes. One sees him everywhere: I was obliged to dance with
him at Lucy Carrington's ball the day you went off to your old reptiles, and he was at the
Thurlows' dinner. Listen: there is another carriage: it must be Admiral Faithorne. He is
always as regular as a clock. Stephen, we are behaving abominably. We must go down.
Why do you ask about that scrub Wray?'
'You think him a scrub?'
'Certainly I do. Too clever by half, like so many of those Treasury fellows, and an infernal
blackguard as well - he treated Harriet Fanshaw so shabbily you would not believe it. A
scrub for all his pretty ways, and a coxcomb: I would not touch him with a barge-pole.'
'He is now acting as second secretary to the Admiralty during Sir John Barrow's illness.
But he was in the Treasury some time ago, when Jack told him he cheated at cards, told
him quite openly, in his candid naval way, in Willis's rooms.'
'Good God, Stephen! You never told me. What a close old soul you are, upon my
honour.'
'You never asked.'
'Did he call Jack out?'
'He did not. I believe he is taking a safer course.' A thundering treble knock on the front
door cut off his words. 'I will tell you later,' he said. 'Thank you, my dear, for my beautiful
present.'
As they went down towards the hall Diana said, 'You know all about ships and the sea,
Stephen.' Stephen bowed: he certainly should have known a fair amount about both,
having sailed with Captain Aubrey since the turn of the century, and in fact he could now
almost always discriminate between larboard and starboard: he prided himself extremely
on his acquaintance with fore and aft and some even more recondite nautical terms. 'Tell
me,' she said, 'What is this barge-pole they are always talking about?'
'Ho, as for that, mate,' said Stephen, 'you must understand that a barge is the captain's
particular boat, or pinnace as we say; and the pole is a kind of unarticulated mast.'
He opened the drawing-room door for her, disclosing not one young woman but two,
alternately scorning one another and adoring Jagiello, who sat between them in his
splendid Hussar's uniform, looking amiable but absent. On seeing Stephen he sprang up,
his spurs clashing, and cried 'Dear Doctor, how happy I am to see you,' clasping him in
both arms and smiling down on him very sweetly.
'Admiral Fait home,' called the butler in a hieratic boom, and the clock struck the hour.
More guests arrived, and profiting by the frequently opened door the kitchen cat glided
in, low to the ground, and swarmed up Stephen's back to his left shoulder, where it sat
purring hoarsely, rubbing its ear against his wig. Still more guests, one of them being the
banker Nathan, Diana's financial adviser, a man after Stephen's own heart, he too being
wholly devoted to the overthrow of Buonaparte, using his highly-specialized weapons with
singular efficiency. And although the ceremony was spoilt by an ugly scene when the
butler removed the cat, they did at last move into the dining-room, where they sat down to
as good a meal as London could offer, for in spite of her sylph-like form Diana was rather
greedy and in addition to an educated taste in wine she possessed an excellent cook. His
talents had on this occasion been directed to the preparation of all Stephen's favourite
dishes.
'May I help you to some of these truffles, ma'am?' said he to his right-hand neighbour, a
dowager whose influential countenance had helped to re-establish Diana's reputation,
damaged by ill-judged connections in India and the United States and only partially
restored by her marriage.
'Alas, I dare not,' she said. 'But it would give me great pleasure to see you do so. If you
will take an old woman's advice, you will eat up all the truffles that come your way, while
your innards can still withstand 'em.'
'Then I believe I shall,' said Stephen, plunging a spoon into the pyramid. 'It will be long
before I see another. Tomorrow, with the blessing, I shall be aboard ship, and then hard
tack, salt-horse, dried peas and small beer must be my lot: at least until that Buonaparte is
brought down.'
'Let us drink to his confusion,' said the dowager, raising her glass. The whole table drank
to his confusion, and then at due intervals to Dr Maturin's return, to his very happy return,
to the Royal Navy, to one another, and then standing - a point of some difficulty to Miss
Trevor, who was obliged to cling to Jagiello's arm ? to the King. In the midst of all this
cheerfulness, of this excellent claret, burgundy and port, Stephen looked anxiously at the
clock, a handsome French cartel on the wall behind Mr Nathan's head: he was to take the
Portsmouth mail, and he had a mortal horror of missing coaches. To his distress he saw
that the hands had not moved since the lobster bisque; like most of the clocks in Diana's
house the cartel had stopped, and he knew that decency forbade even a surreptitious
glance at his watch. Yet although he and Diana lived lives more independent than most
married pairs they were very, very close in other respects: she caught his look and called
down the table 'Eat your pudding in peace, my dear; Jagicllo has borrowed his
ambassador's coach, and he is very kindly driving us down.'
Shortly after this she and the other women withdrew. Jagiello moved up the table to the
dowager's place and Stephen said to him, 'You are a good-hearted soul, my dear, so you
are. Now I shall see Diana for the best part of another twelve hours; and I shall not have to
fret my mind over that infernal mail-coach.'
'Mrs Maturin tried to make me promise that she should drive,' said Jagiello, 'and I have
given my word that she should, once the sun was up, subject to your approval.' He
sounded uneasy.
'And did she submit to your condition?' said Stephen, smiling. 'That was kind. But you
need not be concerned: she drives prodigiously well, and would send a team of camels
through a needle's eye at a brisk round trot.'
'Oh,' cried Jagiello, 'how I admire a woman that can ride and drive, that understands
horse!' And he went on at some length about Mrs Maturin's shining parts, which had
needed only a thorough understanding of horses to be quite complete.
Stephen was aware of Nathan's amused, benign, cynical face on the far side of the table,
smiling at Jagiello's enthusiasm: there was something about Jagiello that made people
smile, he reflected - his youth, his cheerfulness, his abounding health, his beauty, perhaps
his simplicity. 'None of these qualities are mine, or ever have been,' he said to himself.
'Are the Jagiellos conscious of their happiness? Probably not. Fortunatosnimium . .
.'Ayearning for coffee spurred his vitals, and seeing that the decanters had made their last
round untouched by his pink and somewhat stertorous guests he said aloud, 'Perhaps,
gentlemen, we might join the ladies.'
Jagiello's offer of the coach had come as a surprise, and the other carriages had been
ordered early so that Dr Maturin should be able to make his farewells and reach the
Portsmouth coach with half an hour to spare. The carriages therefore appeared at half
past ten and rolled away, leaving Stephen, Diana, and Jagiello with a delightful sense of
holiday, of free, unexpected, unmortgaged time. Nathan was also left behind, partly
because he had come on foot from his house just round the corner and partly because he
wished to speak to Diana about money. She had brought some magnificent jewels back
from India and the United States, many of which she never wore; and in the present state
of war, with Napoleon's astonishing, horrifying victories over the Austrians and Prussians,
their value had increased immensely. Nathan wanted her to take advantage of the fact
and to put some of the rubies ('vulgar great things, much too big, like raspberry tarts' she
said) into a select list of deeply depressed British stocks, a drug on the market - an
investment that would yield splendid returns in the event of an Allied victory at last.
However, he only smiled and bowed when she suggested that they should take the
remains of the bombe glacee into the billiard-room and there eat it while they played.
'Because in any case Stephen must say goodbye to his olive-tree,' she observed. Hers
was perhaps the only billiard-room in Half Moon Street to possess an olive: the room had
been built out over the garden behind, and Stephen, prising up a flagstone by a
convenient window, had set a rooted cutting from a tree growing in his own land of
Catalonia, itself the descendant of one in the grove of Academe. He sat by it now,
showing Nathan the five new leaves and the almost certain promise of a sixth. With
another husband Nathan might have spoken about these stocks and shares; but Stephen
would have nothing whatsoever to do with his wife's fortune ? he left it entirely to her.
'Come, Stephen,' said she, putting down her cue. 'I have left you such a pretty position.'
Dr Maturin addressing himself to a shattered leg with a saw in his hand was a bold, deft,
determined operator; his gestures were rapid, sure, precise. But billiards was not his
game. Although his theory was sound enough his practice was contemptible. Now, having
studied the possibilities at length, he gave his ball a hesitant poke, watched it roll
deliberately into the top right-hand pocket without touching any of the others, and returned
to his olive-tree. The other players belonged to a different world entirely: Nathan gathered
the balls into a corner, nursing therein a long series of almost imperceptible cannons and
breaking them only to leave his opponent in a most uncomfortable situation; Jagiello
accomplished some surprising feats at the top of the table with a spot-stroke; but Diana
favoured a more dashing game by far, delighting in the losing hazard. She walked round
the table with a predatory gleam in her eye, sending the balls streaking up and down with
a ringing crack. At one point, when she had already made a break of thirty-seven and
needed only three to win, the balls were awkwardly placed in the middle. She hoisted her
slim person on to the edge of the table and she was about to reach right out with her
whole length poised over the baize when Stephen called 'Take the rest to it, my dear; take
the long rest, for all love.' There was a strong possibility that she was with child, and he
did not like the position at all.
'Bah,' said she, lowering her cue to her outstretched hand: she glared along it, her eyes
narrowed, the tip of her tongue showing from the corner of her mouth; she paused, and
then with a strong smooth stroke sent the red straight into the bottom right-hand pocket
while her own ball shot into that on the left. She slipped off the table with such a lithe, easy
grace and such an open delighted triumph that Stephen's heart stopped for a beat and the
other men looked at her with the utmost fondness.
'Captain Jagiello's coach," said the butler.
As far as real battlefields and beds of roses were concerned, Captain Aubrey was far
better acquainted with the first, partly because of his profession, which, with enormous
intervals of delay, often cold and always wet, brought him into violent conflict with the
King's enemies, to say nothing of the Admiralty, the Navy Board, and bloody-minded
superiors and subordinates, and partly because he was a wretched gardener. For all his
loving care the roses at Ashgrove Cottage produced more greenfly, caterpillars, mildew,
rust, and grey mould than flowers -never enough at any one time to make a bed for a
dwarf, let alone a six-foot sea-officer who tipped the beam at sixteen stone. In the
figurative sense, his marriage was a good deal nearer the roses than most; he was a good
deal happier than he deserved (he was neither a sure provider nor quite strictly
monogamous) and although he was not ideally happy, although he might secretly wish for
a companion with more sense of a man's carnal nature and somewhat less possessive, he
was profoundly attached to Sophie: and in any case he was often away from home-for
years on end.
He now stood on the poop of HMS Worcester, about to set off again; and his wife sat a
little way behind him, on an incongruous elbow-chair brought on deck for the occasion.
The ship had been at single anchor in Spithead these long hours past, the Blue Peter as
firmly established at her foretopmast head as though it had been nailed there, her
foretopsail loosed, and her capstan-bars shipped and swifted a whole watch ago, ready to
send her on her way: the entire ship's company was in a state of angry tension - officers
snappish, dinner delayed, all eyes indignantly turned to the shore. She swung broad on
摘要:

TheIonianMissionCHAPTERONEMarriagewasoncerepresentedasafieldofbattleratherthanabedofroses,andperhapstherearesomewhomaystillsupportthisview;butjustasDrMaturinhadmadeafarmoreunsuitablematchthanmost,sohesetaboutdealingwiththesituationinafarmorecompendious,peaceableandefficaciouswaythanthegreatmajorityo...

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