"Stoker, Bram - The Lady Of The Shroud" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stoker Bram)

father, Roger and Patience. Patience, who was born in 1858, married
an Irishman of the name of Sellenger--which was the usual way of
pronouncing the name of St. Leger, or, as they spelled it, Sent
Leger--restored by later generations to the still older form. He was
a reckless, dare-devil sort of fellow, then a Captain in the Lancers,
a man not without the quality of bravery--he won the Victoria Cross
at the Battle of Amoaful in the Ashantee Campaign. But I fear he
lacked the seriousness and steadfast strenuous purpose which my
father always says marks the character of our own family. He ran
through nearly all of his patrimony--never a very large one; and had
it not been for my grand-aunt's little fortune, his days, had he
lived, must have ended in comparative poverty. Comparative, not
actual; for the Meltons, who are persons of considerable pride, would
not have tolerated a poverty-stricken branch of the family. We don't
think much of that lot--any of us.

Fortunately, my great-aunt Patience had only one child, and the
premature decease of Captain St. Leger (as I prefer to call the name)
did not allow of the possibility of her having more. She did not
marry again, though my grandmother tried several times to arrange an
alliance for her. She was, I am told, always a stiff, uppish person,
who would not yield herself to the wisdom of her superiors. Her own
child was a son, who seemed to take his character rather from his
father's family than from my own. He was a wastrel and a rolling
stone, always in scrapes at school, and always wanting to do
ridiculous things. My father, as Head of the House and his own
senior by eighteen years, tried often to admonish him; but his
perversity of spirit and his truculence were such that he had to
desist. Indeed, I have heard my father say that he sometimes
threatened his life. A desperate character he was, and almost devoid
of reverence. No one, not even my father, had any influence--good
influence, of course, I mean--over him, except his mother, who was of
my family; and also a woman who lived with her--a sort of governess--
aunt, he called her. The way of it was this: Captain St. Leger had
a younger brother, who made an improvident marriage with a Scotch
girl when they were both very young. They had nothing to live on
except what the reckless Lancer gave them, for he had next to nothing
himself, and she was "bare"--which is, I understand, the indelicate
Scottish way of expressing lack of fortune. She was, however, I
understand, of an old and somewhat good family, though broken in
fortune--to use an expression which, however, could hardly be used
precisely in regard to a family or a person who never had fortune to
be broken in! It was so far well that the MacKelpies--that was the
maiden name of Mrs. St. Leger--were reputable--so far as fighting was
concerned. It would have been too humiliating to have allied to our
family, even on the distaff side, a family both poor and of no
account. Fighting alone does not make a family, I think. Soldiers
are not everything, though they think they are. We have had in our
family men who fought; but I never heard of any of them who fought
because they WANTED to. Mrs. St. Leger had a sister; fortunately