Page:Works of Tagore from the Modern Review, 1909-24 Segment 1.pdf/12

552 breast. The Deputy Magistrate invited him to a seat on the dais, beside his own. The Court-room was crowded to suffocation. A sensation of this magnitude had not been witnessed in this Court for many years.

When the time for the case to be called on drew near, a chuprassi came and whispered something in Bepin Babu's ear. He got up very much agitated and walked out begging the Deputy Magistrate to excuse him for a few minutes.

Coming outside, he saw his old father a little way off, standing under a banian tree barefooted and wrapped in a piece of namavali. A string of beads was in his hand. His slender form shone with a gentle lustre and tranquil compassion seemed to radiate from his forehead.

Bepin, hampered by his close-fitting trousers and his flowing chupkan, touched his father's feet with his forehead. In doing so his turban came off and kissed his nose and his watch popped out of his pocket and swung to and fro in the air. Bepin adjusted his attire hurriedly and begged his father to come to his pleader's house close by.

"No thank you"—Krishna Gopal replied—"I will tell you here what I have got to say."

A curious crowd had gathered there by this time. Bepin's attendants pushed them back.

Krishna Gopal then said—"You must do what you can to get Asim acquitted and restore him the lands that you have taken away from him."

"Is it for this, father"—said Bepin very much surprised—"that you have come all the way from Benares? Would you tell me why you have made them the objects of your special favour?"

"What would you gain by knowing it, my boy?"

But Bepin persisted. "It is only this father;" he went on—"I have revoked many a grant because I thought the parties were not deserving. There were many Brahmins amongst them—but you never said a word then. Are you so keen about these Mohamedans now? After all that has happened, if I drop this case against Asim and give him back his lands, what shall I say to people?"

Krishna Gopal maintained a silence for some moments. Then, passing the beads through his shaky fingers with rapidity, he spoke with a tremulous voice—"Should it be necesary [sic] to explain your conduct to people, you may tell them that Asimuddin is my son—and your brother."

"What?"—exclaimed Bepin in painful surprise—"By the Mohamedan woman?"

"It is so, my son"—was the calm reply.

Bepin stood there for some time in mute astonishment. Then he found words to say—"Come home, father—we shall talk about it afterwards."

"No, my son"—replied the old man—"Having once relinquished the world for serving my God, I cannot go home again. I return from here. Now I leave you to do as your sense of duty may suggest to you". He then blessed his son and checking his tears with difficulty walked off with tottering steps.

Bepin was dumb-founded, not knowing what to say and what to do. "So,—such was the piety of the older generation"—he said to himself. He reflected with pride how superior he was to 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 gone into shreds, covered his person. "This, my brother!"—Bepin shuddered to think.

The Deputy Magistrate and Bepin were friends, so 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.

The news of Krishna Gopal's arrival just before the trial soon got abroad however. People began to exchange meaning glances. The pleaders in their shrewdness guessed the whole affair. One of them, Babu Ram Taran, was beholden to Krishna Gopal for his education and his start in life. Somehow or other he had always suspected that the virtue and the piety of his benefactor was all sham. Now he was fully convinced that if a searching enquiry were made, all "pious" men might be found out. "Let