No Thoroughfare | Page 6

the point nearest to its base
at which one could take the river (if so inodorously minded) bore the
appellation Break-Neck-Stairs. The court-yard itself had likewise been
descriptively entitled in old time, Cripple Corner.
Years before the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, people

had left off taking boat at Break-Neck-Stairs, and watermen had ceased
to ply there. The slimy little causeway had dropped into the river by a
slow process of suicide, and two or three stumps of piles and a rusty
iron mooring-ring were all that remained of the departed Break-Neck
glories. Sometimes, indeed, a laden coal barge would bump itself into
the place, and certain laborious heavers, seemingly mud-engendered,
would arise, deliver the cargo in the neighbourhood, shove off, and
vanish; but at most times the only commerce of Break-Neck-Stairs
arose out of the conveyance of casks and bottles, both full and empty,
both to and from the cellars of Wilding & Co., Wine Merchants. Even
that commerce was but occasional, and through three-fourths of its
rising tides the dirty indecorous drab of a river would come solitarily
oozing and lapping at the rusty ring, as if it had heard of the Doge and
the Adriatic, and wanted to be married to the great conserver of its
filthiness, the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor.
Some two hundred and fifty yards on the right, up the opposite hill
(approaching it from the low ground of Break-Neck-Stairs) was Cripple
Corner. There was a pump in Cripple Corner, there was a tree in
Cripple Corner. All Cripple Corner belonged to Wilding and Co., Wine
Merchants. Their cellars burrowed under it, their mansion towered over
it. It really had been a mansion in the days when merchants inhabited
the City, and had a ceremonious shelter to the doorway without visible
support, like the sounding-board over an old pulpit. It had also a
number of long narrow strips of window, so disposed in its grave brick
front as to render it symmetrically ugly. It had also, on its roof, a
cupola with a bell in it.
"When a man at five-and-twenty can put his hat on, and can say 'this
hat covers the owner of this property and of the business which is
transacted on this property,' I consider, Mr. Bintrey, that, without being
boastful, he may be allowed to be deeply thankful. I don't know how it
may appear to you, but so it appears to me."
Thus Mr. Walter Wilding to his man of law, in his own counting- house;
taking his hat down from its peg to suit the action to the word, and
hanging it up again when he had done so, not to overstep the modesty

of nature.
An innocent, open-speaking, unused-looking man, Mr. Walter Wilding,
with a remarkably pink and white complexion, and a figure much too
bulky for so young a man, though of a good stature. With crispy curling
brown hair, and amiable bright blue eyes. An extremely communicative
man: a man with whom loquacity was the irrestrainable outpouring of
contentment and gratitude. Mr. Bintrey, on the other hand, a cautious
man, with twinkling beads of eyes in a large overhanging bald head,
who inwardly but intensely enjoyed the comicality of openness of
speech, or hand, or heart.
"Yes," said Mr. Bintrey. "Yes. Ha, ha!"
A decanter, two wine-glasses, and a plate of biscuits, stood on the desk.
"You like this forty-five year old port-wine?" said Mr. Wilding.
"Like it?" repeated Mr. Bintrey. "Rather, sir!"
"It's from the best corner of our best forty-five year old bin," said Mr.
Wilding.
"Thank you, sir," said Mr. Bintrey. "It's most excellent."
He laughed again, as he held up his glass and ogled it, at the highly
ludicrous idea of giving away such wine.
"And now," said Wilding, with a childish enjoyment in the discussion
of affairs, "I think we have got everything straight, Mr. Bintrey."
"Everything straight," said Bintrey.
"A partner secured--"
"Partner secured," said Bintrey.
"A housekeeper advertised for--"

"Housekeeper advertised for," said Bintrey, "'apply personally at
Cripple Corner, Great Tower Street, from ten to twelve'--to-morrow, by
the bye."
"My late dear mother's affairs wound up--"
"Wound up," said Bintrey.
"And all charges paid."
"And all charges paid," said Bintrey, with a chuckle: probably
occasioned by the droll circumstance that they had been paid without a
haggle.
"The mention of my late dear mother," Mr. Wilding continued, his eyes
filling with tears and his pocket-handkerchief drying them, "unmans me
still, Mr. Bintrey. You know how I loved her; you (her lawyer) know
how she loved me. The utmost love of mother and child was cherished
between us, and we never experienced one moment's division or
unhappiness from the time when she took me under her care. Thirteen
years in all! Thirteen years under my late dear mother's