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still on the Boil?
     
    PPS. Odds heart, I tell an untruth! A Letter from Drake in June. They are happy. That is such a splendid thing. Him and Morwenna I must see when I come home.
     
    Demelza took the letter from Ross and held it crackling in her fingers. Then she got up and put it back in the drawer.
    'Perhaps if George remarried, Geoffrey Charles would be more willing to come home, make his home among us again.'
    'I doubt if that would make so much difference. Not, that is, while the war lasts.' 'Well, at least thank God Jeremy has not gone.' 'No...'
    Demelza came back, noticing his tone. 'You do not surely wish him to go?... Do you?'
    Ross scowled his discomfort at the question. 'Of course not! Not my only son. But mixed feelings, as you must realize. This is not a colonial war - not a war such as I fought in, which was a mistake from the beginning. This is a war for survival - our survival; and as such must be ... fought out. If I were younger - as you know ...'
    'Yes, I know. But Jeremy's not a fighter - at least not in that way.'
    ‘ No, not in that way.'
    'But he is working, is he not, for the mine?'
    'Oh, indeed! I cannot fault him. He takes more man his fair share of any work that is going. I must admire him gready for all of it.' -
    'Must? ' Demelza said gently.
    Ross shifted. 'We have been well enough together these last months. Since he discovered to me his passion for the properties of strong steam - since we had it out together as to why he had concealed it so long, and all the foolish subterfuge of his going fishing - since then we have been in good accord. Really, my love, I mean it.'
    ‘I m glad. I still think sometimes he feels...' 'That he cannot escape from being the owner's son? That I understand. Perhaps if I went away again .. 'No.'
    Ross put his hand over hers. 'At first, of course, I was so angry with him for putting me in a false position ... And yet, after a time, I felt that more than half the fault was mine. If there is not the communication there should be between a father and a son, surely it is the father who mostly lacks the insight and the understanding.'
    'Not always,' said Demelza. ‘I have seen you make the effort. But anyway let it be. Forget it - if it is over.'
    'It is over. But should not be forgotten, as an object lesson for us both. I mean for him and me.'
    Demelza said: 'Even Mr Harvey was telling me what a talented son we have.'
    'It is good to know he is so regarded.' Ross added: 'Thank God he seems to have grown out of his disappointment over Cuby Trevanion.'
    She turned. 'He hasn't, Ross. I'm certain sure of that. More's the pity. If Clowance is in two minds, Jeremy is not. It's something I know. He grieves for that girl all the time.'

Chapter Two
    I
     
    Friday was lowering, with nothing to illumine either sky or sea until late in the afternoon when a red grin appeared in the west where the sun was about to set. At the same time drifting rain moved over the land and a few partial and indistinct rainbows slid across the moorland to semaphore the end of the day.
    Trenwith House, that property belonging to Geoffrey Charles Poldark; inherited from his father, long ago dead in a mining accident, looked at its coldest and most neglected as dusk began to fall. Bu ilt of enduring Tudor stone and designed with the natural elegance which seemed to come to those forgotten men who generally worked without benefit of architect, it had survived the endless ranting of storm and tempest for three centuries, and structurally it was still sound. A pane or two of glass was cracked, a gutter had rotted here and there and a chimney stack had split. But the roof of giant Delabole slates - put there, one would suppose, by a race of weight-lifters — had cared nothing for wind and weather, and all the granite mouldings, lintels and architraves were as sound as when they had been constructed in the year Henr y VIII married Catherine of Ara gon.
    Throughout this time the house had rece ived the