When Alick went back to the house with his cousin, he had a good opportunity for consulting him about his affairs, but he did not do it although he knew that Frank was both able and willing to help him. It is a true saying that the real spendthrift turns for help much more readily to a hard-hearted usurer than to his friends and relations.--He is too proud to confess his debts and sins, but not too proud to humble himself by begging and borrowing from disreputable Jews. Such conduct however cannot, in the true sense of the word, be said to arise from pride, but from a miserable insensate cowardice, a fear of the kind and sensible advice of friends and relations.
Alick was silent, and Walked restlessly up and down the room while his wife and cousin talked over what had occurred. He felt himself to be in a very disagreeable position, for unless the money was paid, his creditor, perhaps all his creditors, would go to law with him. He could bear it no longer, and though it was rapidly growing dark, ordered his horse, and went out for what he called a ride--in reality it was to see Mr. Pomuchelskopp.
Pomuchelskopp listened sympathetically to Mr. von Rambow's story, and loudly bewailed the wickedness of mankind, adding that in his opinion when Mr. von Rambow went to the expense of having a bailiff, that bailiff ought to be able to choose a trustworthy man to send on an errand of such importance. He did not want to say more at present, but still he must confess that he thought Hawermann always acted too much on his own judgment; for instance with regard to the glebe lands; he had persuaded the late squire to rent the fields for his own benefit, and he, Pomuchelskopp would prove clearly that the lease of the glebe had been injurious to the interests of Pümpelhagen. He then went on to tell Alick a long winded tale, which he could not understand, because he was a very poor arithmetician, and besides that, could think of nothing but his lost money at the moment. He therefore said "yes" to everything his companion told him, and at last forced himself to ask Pomuchelskopp to lend him another three hundred pounds. Pomuchelskopp at first looked doubtful, scratched his ear, and then said, "yes" in his turn, but only on condition that Alick should not rent the glebe from the new clergyman.--Mr. von Rambow might have turned restive at this condition being annexed to the bargain, but Pomuchelskopp showed once more by figures that Pümpelhagen and Gürlitz would both gain by the arrangement. Alick only half heard what was said to him, and at length agreed to give a written consent to the plan proposed; his debts were pressing, and he must rid himself of the worst claims at any cost. He was just the kind of man who would cut the throat of his only milch cow in hopes of making money by the sale of its skin.