“Because,” he said, “I can’t trust them. Besides, how am I to get bricklayers and carpenters in a place like this?”
I noticed all through that his madness or the past in his mind was mixed up with the real and the present.
“Couldn’t you postpone the marriage?” I asked.
“No!” he exclaimed, starting to his feet. “No!” and he looked round wildly on the darkening bush. There was madness in his tone that time, the last “No!” sounding as if from a man who was begging for his life.
“Couldn’t you run up a shanty then, to live in until the house is ready?” I suggested, to soothe him.
He gave his arm an impatient swing. “Do you think I’d ask that girl to live in a hut?” he said. “She ought to live in a palace!”
There seemed no way out of it, so I said nothing: he turned his back and stood looking away over the dark, low-lying sweep of bush towards sunset. He folded his arms tight, and seemed to me to be holding himself. After a while he let fall his arms and turned and blinked at me and the fire like a man just woke from a doze or rousing himself out of a deep reverie.
“Oh, I almost forgot the billy!” he said. “I’ll make some tea—you must be hungry.”
He made the tea and fried a couple of slices of ham; he laid the biggest slice on a thick slice of white baker’s bread on a tin plate, and put it and a pint-pot full of tea on a box by my side. “Have it here, by the fire,” he said; “it’s warmer and more comfortable.”
I took the plate on my knee, and I must say I thoroughly enjoyed that meal. The bracing mountain air and the walk had made me hungry. The hatter had his meal standing up, cutting his ham on a slice of bread with a clasp-knife. It was bush fashion, and set me thinking of some old times. He ate very little, and, as far as I saw, he didn’t smoke. Non-smokers are very scarce in the bush.