Physically, he was
still stiff and sore from the plank bed. Mentally, he was a
volcano. He had been marched up the Haymarket in the full sight of
all London by a bounder of a policeman. He had been talked to like
an erring child by a magistrate whom nothing could convince that he
had not been under the influence of alcohol at the moment of his
arrest. (The man had said things about his liver, kindly
be-warned-in-time-and-pull-up-before-it-is-too-late things, which
would have seemed to Percy indecently frank if spoken by his
medical adviser in the privacy of the sick chamber.) It is perhaps
not to be wondered at that Belpher Castle, for all its beauty of
scenery and architecture, should have left Lord Belpher a little
cold. He was seething with a fury which the conversation of Reggie
Byng had done nothing to allay in the course of the journey from
London. Reggie was the last person he would willingly have chosen
as a companion in his hour of darkness. Reggie was not soothing. He
would insist on addressing him by his old Eton nickname of Boots
which Percy detested. And all the way down he had been breaking out
at intervals into ribald comments on the recent unfortunate
occurrence which were very hard to bear.
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