Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/384

12 only two favourite authors, and after reading Miss Tyler’s work one wonders whether there is not some special deity who smiles upon the choice of that wonderful land as a field for fiction. Miss Tyler’s novel has the atmosphere of Italy breathing through every page. We have the old aristocracy typified in the Prince di Consa and his beautiful daughters: like their magnificent palaces, glorious without, but faded and decaying within, the family presents to the world an appearance of stateliness and pride of race which hide ruined fortunes and an abandoned morale. The Prince himself carries off the situation boldly to the end, but the inevitable crash develops and well-nigh overwhelms his son Sigismondo, round whose efforts to restore the family fortunes the plot thickens. A good marriage is evidently the obvious solution, but what shall a young man do when love pulls one way and purse-strings another, not to speak of a very able and intriguing Marchesa di Pina who knows exactly what she wants and holds strong cards played with entire unscrupulousness. The Marchesa is a most original and effectively drawn character, and both Anita and Raffaella are such charming girls that it is hard to say which is the real heroine. We have purposely avoided unravelling the plot, which is extremely ingenious and well constructed and holds the reader’s attention to the end.

This is Mr. Chilton’s first novel, and it is made noteworthy by his clever study of the character of his hero, Mark Rawson. The author knows intimately the manners and conversation of the self-made Midland manufacturer and his associates, and his picture of Mark Rawson, so utterly absorbed in “getting on”—in “besting the other chaps”—that his home is, as it were, but a bye-product, has a photographic exactitude.

As Mark’s wealth had increased, so had his self-confidence and dominance. Once resolved on a course of action, he bends his Board of Directors to his will. When a strike occurs, he thinks to dominate his workpeople in like manner. But they are of less pliant material, and in the uproar Mark receives an injury to his head which brings on a long illness.

For the first time in his life, he becomes an onlooker: he has leisure to think, and begins to readjust his values, to see that there is such a thing as compromise.

But this new Mark Rawson is incomprehensible to his colleagues and—with the exception of his daughter Amy—to his family: