One who was a sculptor, a Slav, a sometime resident in New York, an
egoist, and impecunious, was to be found of an evening in June Forsyte's
studio on the bank of the Thames at Chiswick. On the evening of July 6,
Boris Strumolowski--several of whose works were on show there because
they were as yet too advanced to be on show anywhere else--had begun
well, with that aloof and rather Christ-like silence which admirably
suited his youthful, round, broad cheek-boned countenance framed in
bright hair banged like a girl's. June had known him three weeks, and he
still seemed to her the principal embodiment of genius, and hope of
the future; a sort of Star of the East which had strayed into an
unappreciative West. Until that evening he had conversationally confined
himself to recording his impressions of the United States, whose dust
he had just shaken from off his feet--a country, in his opinion, so
barbarous in every way that he had sold practically nothing there, and
become an object of suspicion to the police; a country, as he said,
without a race of its own, without liberty, equality, or fraternity,
without principles, traditions, taste, without--in a word--a soul. He
had left it for his own good, and come to the only other country where
he could live well. June had dwelt unhappily on him in her lonely
moments, standing before his creations--frightening, but powerful and
symbolic once they had been explained! That he, haloed by bright hair
like an early Italian painting, and absorbed in his genius to the
exclusion of all else--the only sign of course by which real genius
could be told--should still be a "lame duck" agitated her warm heart
almost to the exclusion of Paul Post. And she had begun to take steps to
clear her Gallery, in order to fill it with Strumolowski masterpieces.
She had at once encountered trouble. Paul Post had kicked; Vospovitch
had stung. With all the emphasis of a genius which she did not as yet
deny them, they had demanded another six weeks at least of her Gallery.
The American stream, still flowing in, would soon be flowing out. The
American stream was their right, their only hope, their salvation--since
nobody in this "beastly" country cared for Art. June had yielded to
the demonstration. After all Boris would not mind their having the full
benefit of an American stream, which he himself so violently despised.
This evening she had put that to Boris with nobody else present, except
Hannah Hobdey, the mediaeval black-and-whitist, and Jimmy Portugal,
editor of the Neo-Artist. She had put it to him with that sudden
confidence which continual contact with the neo-artistic world had never
been able to dry up in her warm and generous nature. He had not broken
his Christ-like silence, however, for more than two minutes before she
began to move her blue eyes from side to side, as a cat moves its tail.
This--he said--was characteristic of England, the most selfish country
in the world; the country which sucked the blood of other countries;
destroyed the brains and hearts of Irishmen, Hindus, Egyptians, Boers,
and Burmese, all the best races in the world; bullying, hypocritical
England! This was what he had expected, coming to, such a country, where
the climate was all fog, and the people all tradesmen perfectly blind
to Art, and sunk in profiteering and the grossest materialism. Conscious
that Hannah Hobdey was murmuring, "Hear, hear!" and Jimmy Portugal
sniggering, June grew crimson, and suddenly rapped out: