RUTH. It was last summer he had a bad spell first, but he’s been ailin’ ever since Mary died—eight months ago.
ANDREW. (harshly) Why didn’t you let me know—cable me? Do you want him to die, all of you? I’m damned if it doesn’t look that way! (His voice breaking) Poor old chap! To be sick in this out-of-the-way hole without anyone to attend to him but a country quack! It’s a damned shame!
RUTH. (dully) I wanted to send you word once, but he only got mad when I told him. He was too proud to ask anything, he said.
ANDREW. Proud? To ask me? (He jumps to his feet and paces nervously back and forth) I can’t understand the way you’ve acted. Didn’t you see how sick he was getting? Couldn’t you realize—why, I nearly dropped in my tracks when I saw him! He looks—(He shudders)—terrible! (With fierce scorn) I suppose you’re so used to the idea of his being delicate that you took his sickness as a matter of course. God, if I’d only known!
RUTH. (without emotion) A letter takes so long to get where you were—and we couldn’t afford to telegraph. We owed everyone already, and I couldn’t ask Ma. She’d been giving me money out of her savings till she hadn’t much left. Don’t say anything to Rob about it. I never told him. He’d only be mad at me if he knew. But I had to, because—God knows how we’d have got on if I hadn’t.
ANDREW. You mean to say—— (His eyes seem to take in the poverty-stricken appearance of the room for the first time) You sent that telegram to me collect. Was it because—— (RUTH nods silently. ANDREW pounds on the table with his fist) Good God! And all this time I’ve been—why I’ve had everything! (He sits down in his chair and pulls it close to RUTH’S—impulsively) But—I can’t get it through my head. Why? Why? What has happened? How did it ever come about? Tell me!
RUTH. (dully) There’s nothing much to tell. Things kept getting worse, that’s all—and Rob didn’t seem to care. He never took any interest since way back when your Ma died. After that he got men to take charge, and they nearly all cheated him—he couldn’t tell—and left one after another. Then after Mary died he didn’t pay no heed to anything any more—just stayed indoors and took to reading books again. So I had to ask Ma if she wouldn’t help us some.
ANDREW. (surprised and horrified) Why, damn it, this is frightful! Rob must be mad not to have let me know. Too proud to ask help of me! What’s the matter with him in God’s name? (A sudden, horrible suspicion entering his mind) Ruth! Tell me the truth. His mind hasn’t gone back on him, has it?
RUTH. (dully) I don’t know. Mary’s dying broke him up terrible—but he’s used to her being gone by this, I s’pose.
ANDREW. (looking at her queerly) Do you mean to say you’re used to it?