She was sitting in the big leather chair in the consulting-room. The small grey-white window panes and the black crooked bough of the apple tree across them made a pattern in her brain. Dr. Charles stood before her on the hearthrug. She saw his shark's tooth, hanging sharp in the snap of his jaws. He was powerful, savage and benevolent.
He had told her what was wrong with Roddy.
"What—does—it—mean?"
The savage light went out of his eyes. They were dull and kind under his red shaggy eyebrows.
"It means that you won't have him with you very long, Mary."
That Roddy would die. That Roddy would die. Roddy. That was what he had come home for.
"He ought never to have gone out with his heart in that state. It beats me how he's pulled through those five years. Five weeks of it were enough to kill him…. Jem Alderson must have taken mighty good care of him."
Jem Alderson. She remembered. The big shoulders, the little screwed up eyes, the long moustaches, the good, gladiator face. Jem Alderson had taken care of him. Jem Alderson had cared.
"I don't know what your mother could have been thinking of to let him go."
"Mamma doesn't think of things. It wasn't her fault. She didn't know.
Uncle Edward and Uncle Victor made him."