Mr. Robertson

As the elder figure of the Robertson family, he presides over the domestic order into which Nellie brings her reawakened brother, and his approval or bafflement shapes how John is received. His stake lies in the family's stability and in the strange, half-legendary brother-in-law returned from the dead, a man whose antique assumptions test even a patient patriarch's composure. He matters because the early arc of John's reeducation runs through the family drawing room, where old authority meets a world it no longer fully commands.