Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [87]
THIS TIME THERE was no grand farewell party. Brewster simply slipped away alone to the Grand Trunk Road. He had insisted that no one should accompany him, and he did so with such un-Brewsterlike firmness that even Yule was taken aback, and yielded, though to me it seemed like madness to let the man make that trip by himself.
And so Brewster departed once more for that valley in the Thar. Soon Yule left us again also—he had another breakdown of his health, and went on recreational leave to Java—and, since we were now in the full throes of planning the Indian railway system and our staff was already undermanned, my own responsibilities multiplied manifold. In 1857 we had had only two hundred miles of track in operation in all of India. Our task was to increase that a hundredfold, not only for greater ease in our own military operations, but also to provide India with a modern system of mass transportation that would further the economic development of that huge and still largely primitive land. As the months went along and my work engulfed me, I confess that I forgot all about Brewster and Smithers.
Yule returned from Java, looking much older. Before long he would resign from the Service to return to England, and then, as his wife’s health weakened also, on to the more benevolent clime of Italy, where he would complete and publish his famous translations of Marco Polo and other medieval travelers in Asia. In his remaining time in Calcutta he said nothing about Brewster and Smithers either; I think they had fallen completely out of his mind, which had no room for the irresponsible Smitherses and feckless Brewsters of the world.
One day in 1861 or early 1862 I was hard at work, preparing a report for the Governor-General on the progress of the Bombay-Calcutta line, when an old man in faded robes was shown into my office. He was thin and very tall, with rounded shoulders and a bent, bowed posture, and his long, narrow face was deeply lined, so that his eyes looked out at me from a bewildering webwork of crevices. He was trembling as though palsied, though more likely it was just the tremor of age. Under his arm he carried a rectangular box of some considerable size, fastened with an ornate clasp of native design. Because his skin was so dark and he was wearing those loose robes I mistook him for a native himself at first, but then I began to think he might be a deeply tanned Englishman, and when he spoke his accent left no doubt of that.
“You don’t recognize me, do you?” he asked.
I stared. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I do.” I was annoyed by the interruption. “Are you sure that the business you have is with the Public Works Department?”
“I am, in fact, an employee of the Public Works Department. Or was, at least.”
His face was still unrecognizable to me. But the voice—
“Brewster?”
“Brewster, yes. Back at last.”
“But this is impossible! You’re—what, thirty-five years old? You look to be—”
“Sixty? Seventy?”
“I would have to say so, yes.”
He studied me implacably. “I am Brewster,” he said. “I will be thirty-seven come January.”
“This is impossible,” I said, though aware of the foolishness of my words as soon as I spoke them. “For a man to have aged so quickly—”
“Impossible, yes, that’s the word. But I am Brewster.”
He set that box down on my desk, heedless of the clutter of blueprints and maps on which he was placing it. And he said, “You may recall that Lieutenant-Colonel Yule ordered me to return to a certain valley in the Thar and bring Major Smithers out of it. I have done so. It was not an easy journey, but I have accomplished it, and I have returned. And I have brought