Chapter 32 - Page 2

parapet upon the running water below. A man seen there
looking thus fixedly into the river was pretty sure to be
one whom the world did not treat kindly for some reason or
other. While one in straits on the townward bridge did not
mind who saw him so, and kept his back to the parapet to
survey the passers-by, one in straits on this never faced
the road, never turned his head at coming footsteps, but,
sensitive to his own condition, watched the current whenever
a stranger approached, as if some strange fish interested
him, though every finned thing had been poached out of the
river years before.

There and thus they would muse; if their grief were the
grief of oppression they would wish themselves kings; if
their grief were poverty, wish themselves millionaires; if
sin, they would wish they were saints or angels; if despised
love, that they were some much-courted Adonis of county
fame. Some had been known to stand and think so long with
this fixed gaze downward that eventually they had allowed
their poor carcases to follow that gaze; and they were
discovered the next morning out of reach of their troubles,
either here or in the deep pool called Blackwater, a little
higher up the river.

To this bridge came Henchard, as other unfortunates had come
before him, his way thither being by the riverside path on
the chilly edge of the town. Here he was standing one windy
afternoon when Durnover church clock struck five. While the
gusts were bringing the notes to his ears across the damp
intervening flat a man passed behind him and greeted
Henchard by name. Henchard turned slightly and saw that the
corner was Jopp, his old foreman, now employed elsewhere, to
whom, though he hated him, he had gone for lodgings because
Jopp was the one man in Casterbridge whose observation and
opinion the fallen corn-merchant despised to the point of
indifference.

Henchard returned him a scarcely perceptible nod, and Jopp
stopped.

"He and she are gone into their new house to-day," said
Jopp.

"Oh," said Henchard absently. "Which house is that?"

"Your old one."

"Gone into my house?" And starting up Henchard added, "
MY house of all others in the town!"

"Well, as somebody was sure to live there, and you couldn't,
it can do 'ee no harm that he's the man."

It was quite true: he felt that it was doing him no harm.
Farfrae, who had already taken the yards and stores, had
acquired possession of the house for the obvious convenience
of its contiguity. And yet this act of his taking up
residence within those roomy chambers while he, their former
tenant, lived in a cottage, galled Henchard indescribably.

Jopp continued: "And you heard of that