_[Menton], Tuesday, 13th January 1874._
... I lost a Philipine to little Mary Johnstone last night; so to-day I
sent her a rubbishing doll's toilet, and a little note with it, with
some verses telling how happy children made every one near them happy
also, and advising her to keep the lines, and some day, when she was
"grown a stately demoiselle," it would make her "glad to know she gave
pleasure long ago," all in a very lame fashion, with just a note of
prose at the end, telling her to mind her doll and the dog, and not
trouble her little head just now to understand the bad verses; for some
time when she was ill, as I am now, they would be plain to her and make
her happy. She has just been here to thank me, and has left me very
happy. Children are certainly too good to be true.
Yesterday I walked too far, and spent all the afternoon on the outside
of my bed; went finally to rest at nine, and slept nearly twelve hours
on the stretch. Bennet (the doctor), when told of it this morning,
augured well for my recovery; he said youth must be putting in strong;
of course I ought not to have slept at all. As it was, I dreamed
_horridly_; but not my usual dreams of social miseries and
misunderstandings and all sorts of crucifixions of the spirit; but of
good, cheery, physical things--of long successions of vaulted, dimly lit
cellars full of black water, in which I went swimming among toads and
unutterable, cold, blind fishes. Now and then these cellars opened up
into sort of domed music-hall places, where one could land for a little
on the slope of the orchestra, but a sort of horror prevented one from
staying long, and made one plunge back again into the dead waters. Then
my dream changed, and I was a sort of Siamese pirate, on a very high
deck with several others. The ship was almost captured, and we were
fighting desperately. The hideous engines we used and the perfectly
incredible carnage that we effected by means of them kept me cheery, as
you may imagine; especially as I felt all the time my sympathy with the
boarders, and knew that I was only a prisoner with these horrid Malays.
Then I saw a signal being given, and knew they were going to blow up the
ship. I leaped right off, and heard my captors splash in the water after
me as thick as pebbles when a bit of river bank has given way beneath
the foot. I never heard the ship blow up; but I spent the rest of the
night swimming about some piles with the whole sea full of Malays,
searching for me with knives in their mouths. They could swim any
distance under water, and every now and again, just as I was beginning
to reckon myself safe, a cold hand would be laid on my ankle--ugh!
However, my long sleep, troubled as it was, put me all right again, and
I was able to work acceptably this morning and be very jolly all day.
This evening I have had a great deal of talk with both the Russian
ladies; they talked very nicely, and are bright, likable women both.
They come from Georgia.
_Wednesday, 10.30._--We have all been to tea to-night at the Russians'
villa. Tea was made out of a samovar, which is something like a small
steam engine, and whose principal advantage is that it burns the fingers
of all who lay their profane touch upon it. After tea Madame Z. played
Russian airs, very plaintive and pretty; so the evening was Muscovite
from beginning to end. Madame G.'s daughter danced a tarantella, which
was very pretty.
Whenever Nelitchka cries--and she never cries except from pain--all that
one has to do is to start "Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre." She cannot
resist the attraction; she is drawn through her sobs into the air; and
in a moment there is Nellie singing, with the glad look that comes into
her face always when she sings, and all the tears and pain forgotten.
It is wonderful, before I shut this up, how that child remains ever
interesting to me. Nothing can stale her infinite variety; and yet it is
not very various. You see her thinking what she is to do or to say next,
with a funny grave air of reserve, and then the face breaks up into a
smile, and it is probably "Berecchino!" said with that sudden little
jump of the voice that one knows in children, as the escape of a
jack-in-the-box, and, somehow, I am quite happy after that!