Krishna Gopal kept silence for some moments. Then, passing the beads through his shaky fingers with rapidity, he spoke with a tremulous voice: ‘Should it be necessary to explain your conduct to people, you may tell them that Asimuddin is my son—and your brother.’
‘What?’ exclaimed Bipin in painful surprise. ‘From a Musalman's womb?’
‘Even so, my son,’ was the calm reply.
Bipin stood there for some time in mute astonishment. Then he found words to say: ‘Come home, father; we will talk about it afterwards.’
‘No, my son,’ replied the old man, ‘having once relinquished the world to serve my God, I cannot go home again. I return hence. Now I leave you to do what your sense of duty may suggest.’ He then blessed his son, and, checking his tears with difficulty, walked off with tottering steps.
Bipin was dumbfounded, not knowing what to say nor what to do. ‘So, such was the piety of the older generation,’ he said to himself. He reflected with pride how much better he was than his father in point of education and morality. This was the result, he concluded, of not having a principle to guide one's actions.
Returning to the Court, he saw Asimuddin outside between two constables, awaiting his trial. He looked emaciated and worn out. His lips were pale and dry, and his eyes unnaturally bright. A dirty piece of cloth worn to shreds covered him. ‘This my brother!’ Bipin shuddered at the thought.
The Deputy Magistrate and Bipin were friends, and the case ended in a fiasco. In a few days Asimuddin was restored to his former condition. Why all this happened, he could not understand. The village people were greatly surprised also.
However, the news of Krishna Gopal's arrival just before the trial soon got abroad. People began to exchange meaning glances. The pleaders in their shrewdness guessed the whole affair. One of them, Ram Taran Babu, was beholden to Krishna Gopal for his education and his start in life. Somehow or other he had always suspected that the virtue and piety of his benefactor were shams. Now he was fully convinced that, if a searching inquiry were made, all ‘pious’ men might be found out. ‘Let them tell their beads as much as they like,’ he thought with glee, ‘everybody in this world is just as bad as myself. The only difference between a good and a bad man is that the good practise dissimulation while the bad don't.’ The revelation that Krishna Gopal's far-famed piety, benevolence, and magnanimity were nothing but a cloak of hypocrisy, settled a difficulty that had oppressed Ram Taran Babu for many years. By what process of reasoning, we do not know, the burden of gratitude was greatly lifted off his mind. It was a vast relief to him!