A Second Coming E-Book

Marsh Richard

• Herausgeber: Enrico Conti
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Richard Marsh (12 October 1857 – 9 August 1915) was the pseudonym of the English author born Richard Bernard Heldmann. A best-selling and prolific author of the late 19th century and the Edwardian period, Marsh is best known now for his supernatural thriller novel The Beetle, which was published the same year as Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), and was initially even more popular.[1] The Beetle remained in print until 1960. Marsh produced nearly 80 volumes of fiction and numerous short stories, in genres including horror, crime, romance and humour. Many of these have been republished recently, beginning with The Beetle in 2004. Marsh's grandson Robert Aickman was a notable writer of short "strange stories".

Leseprobe

Richard Marsh

A Second Coming

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I The Tales which were Told

The Interrupted Dinner

The Woman and the Coats

The Words of the Preacher

The Children’s Mother

The Operation

The Blackleg

In Piccadilly

The Only One that was Left

The First Disciple

The Deputation

The Second Disciple

II The Tumult which Arose

The Charcoal-burner

A Triumphal Entry

The Words of the Wise

The Supplicant

In the Morning

The Miracle of Healing

The Young Man

III The Passion of the People

The Hunt and the Home

They that Would Ask with A Threat

The Asking

A Seminary Priest

And the Child

I

The Tales which were Told

Chapter 1

The Interrupted Dinner

He stood at the corner of the table with his hat and overcoat on, just as he had rushed into the room.

‘Christ has come again!’

The servants were serving the entrees. Their breeding failed them. They stopped to stare at Chisholm. The guests stared too, those at the end leaning over the board to see him better. He looked like a man newly startled out of dreaming, blinking at the lights and glittering table array. His hat was a little on one side of his head. He was hot and short of breath, as if he had been running. They regarded him as a little bewildered, while he, on his part, looked back at them as if they were the creatures of a dream.

‘Christ has come again!’

He repeated the words in a curious, tremulous, sobbing voice, which was wholly unlike his own.

Conversation had languished. Just before his entrance there had been one of those prolonged pauses which, to an ambitious hostess, are as a sound of doom. The dinner bade fair to be a failure. If people will not talk, to offer them to eat is vain. Criticism takes the place of appetite. Amplett looked, for him, bad-tempered. He was leaning back in his chair, smiling wryly at the wineglass which he was twiddling between his fingers. His wife, on the contrary, sat very upright—with her an ominous sign. She looked straight in front of her, with a tender softness in her glance which only to those who did not know her suggested paradise. Over the whole table there was an air of vague depression, an irresistible tendency to be bored.

Chisholm’s unceremonious entry created a diversion. It filliped the atmosphere. Amplett’s bad temper vanished on the instant.

‘Hollo, Hugh! thought you weren’t coming. Sit down, man; in your coat and hat if you like, only do sit down!’

Chisholm eyed him as if not quite certain that it was he who was being spoken to, or who the speaker was. There was that about his bearing which seemed to have a singular effect upon his host. Amplett, leaning farther over the table, called to him in short, sharp tones:

‘Why do you stand and look like that? What’s the matter?’

‘Christ has come again!’

As he repeated the words for the third time, there was in his voice a note of exultation which was in odd dissonance with what was generally believed to be his character. The self-possession for which he was renowned seemed to have wholly deserted him. Something seemed to have shaken his nature to its depths; he who was used to declare that life could offer nothing which was of interest to him.