Harold, after some further persuasion, got into the hansom which Archie had hailed, and was soon driving down Piccadilly to the spacious rooms of the latter—rooms furnished in a wonderful fashion. As a panorama of styles the sitting-room, which was about thirty feet square, with a greenhouse in the rear, would have been worth much to a lecturer on the progress or decadence of art—any average lecturer could make the furniture bear out his views, whether they took one direction or the other.
Two cabinets which had belonged to Louis XV were the finest specimens known in the world. They contained Sèvres porcelain and briar-root pipes. A third cabinet was in the purest style of boarding house art. A small gilt sofa was covered with old French tapestry which would have brought five pounds the square inch at an auction. Beside it was the famous Four-guinea Tottenham Armchair in best Utrecht velvet—three-nine-six in cretonne, carriage paid to any railway-station in the United Kingdom.
A chair, the frame of which was wholly of ivory, carved in Italy, in the seventeenth century, by the greatest artist that ever lived, apparently had its uses in Archie Brown’s entourage, for it sustained in an upright position a half-empty soda-water bottle—the bottle would not have stood upright but for the high relief in the carving of the flowing hair of the figure of Atalanta at one part of the frame. Near it was an interesting old oak chair that was for some time believed to have once belonged to King Henry VIII.
In achieving this striking contrast to the carved ivory, Mr. Brown thought that he had proved his capacity to appreciate an important element in artistic arrangement. He pointed it out to Harold without delay. He had pointed it out to every other person who had visited his rooms.
He also pointed out a picture by one Rembrandt which he had picked up at an auction for forty shillings. A dealer had subsequently assured him that if he wanted a companion picture by the same painter he would not guarantee to procure it for him at a lower figure than twenty-five guineas—perhaps it might even cost him as high as thirty; therefore—the logic was Archie’s—the Rembrandt had been a dead bargain.
Harold looked at this Burgomaster’s Daughter in eighteenth century costume, and said that undoubtedly the painter knew what he was about.
“And so does Archie, tarty chip,” said his host, leading him to one of the bedrooms.
“Now it’s half past seven,” said Archie, leaving him, “and dinner will be served at a quarter to eight. I’ve never been late but once, and Achille was so hurt that he gave me notice. I promised that it should never occur again, and it hasn’t. He doesn’t insist on my dressing for dinner, though he says he should like it.”
“Make my apologies to Achille,” said Harold.
“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” said Archie seriously—“at least I think it won’t.”