Mary could not bring herself to make the conventionally optimistic reply. It did not seem worth while to pretend with phrases in the presence of this old woman already seemingly discarnate for that obscure event of death.
"A long sleep," the old lady went on in her tenuous voice. "A very long sleep. And yet I wonder. Ah, well, it was all said by Shakespeare, was it not? Though frankly I never cared greatly for Shakespeare. It is all too excitable. And yet I wonder."
"What are you wondering, Grandmamma?"
"If this really is the end. There might be something else, you know. Give me my vinaigrette."
The old lady sniffed it as if she would ward off the odors of eternity, just as twenty years ago she had used it against the odors of a much shorter journey to Lyons. She had been only too anxious to sleep then. But now.... How bright her eyes were, like precious stones, like pools of water holding out against the encroaching frost of death.
"I do not really want to die," she said. "It seems such a little while since I began to feel younger again. Of late lying here I have remembered so much that I had forgotten. Odd little incidents of childhood have come back to me so sharply, so very vividly and clearly. Earlier this afternoon, before you came, I saw my father in that corner in his Hessian boots and cocked hat; and he said to me, 'Where's your Mamma?' It was so vivid that I made a movement to get out of bed and run to look for her. And then he asked me to fill his snuff-box with maccaboy. I have often wondered why a man so particular about his personal appearance should be a slave to snuff. But he was. Do you know what maccaboy is?"
Mary shook her head.
"It is a snuff scented with attar of roses, of which he was passionately fond. He acquired the habit when he was fighting in the West Indies. Long ago. Long ago. And of course this vision of him was nothing but an hallucination caused by weakness. Nothing but that. There cannot be anything before us when we lie like this. And yet I wonder. I cannot feel perfectly sure."
Mary did not know what to say. Here was really an opportunity for a clergyman to be useful; but she was afraid of suggesting such a visitor. Yet her grandmother might be hoping that somebody would suggest a clergyman; for, although she would be too proud to ask for one herself, she might want one to be pressed upon her just as she had wanted the doctor pressed upon her.
Mary decided to risk the proposal.