After the first moment, when the association with the home hearth
and the simple fireside evenings of other days had spent itself, the
crickets were rather awful, and personally I would rather have had the
band back. But their weird music prompted a closer union of the guests,
and our chairs were closer together on the veranda and in the office.
We found that we were very charming and interesting people, and I began
to wonder if I had not lost more than I could ever make good by not
seeking the acquaintance of the seven hundred others who were gone.
From day to day, from night to night, our numbers were lessened, but
we never spoke of the departures; we instinctively recognized that it
would have been bad form; we were like the garrison of a beleaguered
city, that lost a few men by famine or foray from time to time, but
kept up a heroic pretense that they were as many as ever. Or, we were
like a shipwrecked crew clinging to a water-logged vessel, and caught
from it now and then by a hungry shark or a hungry wave, or dropping
away into the gulf from mere exhaustion.
These figures are rather violent, and present only a subjective effect
in the more sensitive spirits. As a matter of fact we lived luxuriously
all the time. The time came when we heard that on a certain day the
_chef_ was going, but we should not have known he was gone by any
difference in the table. It grew rather more attractive; if there were
fewer dishes, they were better cooked; one could fancy a touch of
personal attention in them, which one could not have fancied when we
were seven hundred and fifty at table, and the help who served us were
three hundred and fifty.