All day the approaches to the station were besieged by those who hoped for a train; and, on the second night of the invasion, Theodore, sent by his chief with a message to the military transport officer, fought his way through a solid crowd on the platform—a crowd excluded from a train that was packed and struggling with humanity. A crowd that was squalid, unreasoning and blindly selfish; intent only on flight and safety—and some of it brutally intent. There were scuffles with porters and soldiers who refused to open locked doors, angry hootings and wild swayings backward and forward as the train moved out of the station; Theodore’s efforts to make his way to the stationmaster’s office were held to be indicative of a desire to travel by the next train and he was buffeted aside without mercy. There was something in the brute mass of terror that sickened him—a suggestion already of the bestial, the instinctive, the unhuman.
The transport officer looked up at him with tired, angry eyes and demanded what the hell he wanted? … Whereat Theodore handed him a typewritten note from a punctilious chief and explained that they had tried to get through on the telephone, either to him or the stationmaster, but—
“I should rather think not,” said the transport officer rudely. “We’ve both of us got more important things to worry about than little Distribution people. The telephone clerk did bring me some idiotic message or other, but I told him I didn’t want to hear it.”
He glanced at the typewritten note—then glared at it—and went off into a cackle of laughter; which finally tailed into blasphemy coupled with obscene abuse.
“Seen this?” he asked when he had sworn himself out. “Well, at any rate you know what it’s about. The ⸻ has sent for particulars of tomorrow’s refugee train service—wants to know the number and capacity of trains to be dispatched to Newcastle-on-Tyne. Wants to enter it in duplicate, I suppose—and make lots and lots and lots of carbon copies. God in Heaven!”—and again he sputtered into blasphemy. … “Well, I needn’t bother to write down the answer; even if you’ve no more sense than he has, you’ll be able to remember it all right. It’s nil to both questions; nil trains to Newcastle, nil capacity. So that’s that! … What’s more—if it’s any satisfaction to your darned-fool boss to know it—we haven’t been sending any trains to Newcastle all day.”
“But I thought,” began Theodore—wondering if the man were drunk? He was, more than slightly—having fought for two days with panic-stricken devils and helped himself through with much whisky; but, drunk or not, he was sure of his facts and rapped them out with authority.
“Not to Newcastle. The first two or three got as far as Darlington—this morning. There they were pulled up. Then it was Northallerton—now we send ’em off to Thirsk and leave the people there to deal with ’em. You bet they’ll send ’em further if they can—you don’t suppose they want to be eaten out, any more than we do. But, for all I know, they’re getting ’em in from the other side.”
“The other side?” Theodore repeated. “What do you mean?” Whereat the transport officer, grown suddenly uncommunicative, leaned back in his chair and whistled.
“That’s all I can tell you,” he vouchsafed at length. “Trains haven’t run beyond Darlington since yesterday. I conclude H.Q. knows the reason, but they haven’t imparted it to me—I’ve only had my orders. It isn’t our business if the trains get stopped so long as we send ’em off—and we’re sending ’em and asking no questions.”
“Do you mean,” Theodore stammered, “that—this—is going on up north?”
“What do you think?” said the transport officer. “It’s the usual trick, isn’t it? … Start ’em running from two sides at once—don’t let ’em settle, send ’em backwards and forwards, keep ’em going! … We’ve played it often enough on them—now we’re getting a bit of our own back. … However, I’ve no official information. You know just as much as I do.”
“But,” Theodore persisted, “the people coming through from the north. What do they say—they must know?”
“There aren’t any people coming through,” said the other grimly. “Military order since this morning—no passenger traffic from the north runs this side of Thirsk. We’ve got enough of our own, haven’t we? … All I say is—God help Thirsk and especially God help the stationmaster!”
He straightened himself suddenly and grabbed at the papers on his table.
“Now, you’ve got what the damn fool sent you for—and I’m trying to make out my report.”
As Theodore fought his way out of the station and the crowd that seethed round it, he had an intolerable sense of being imprisoned between two fires. If he could see far enough to the north—to Durham and the Tyneside—there would be another hot, throbbing horizon and another stream of human destitution pouring lamentably into the night. … And, between the two fires, the two streams were meeting—turning back upon themselves, intermingling … in blind and agonized obedience to the order to “keep ’em going!” … What happened when a train was halted by signal and the thronged misery inside it learned that here, without forethought or provision made, its flight must come to an end? At Thirsk, Northallerton, by the wayside, anywhere, in darkness? … A thin sweep of rain was driving down the street, and he fancied wretched voices calling through darkness, through rain. Asking what, in God’s name, was to become of them and where, in God’s name, they were to go? … And the overworked officials who could give no answer, seeking only to be rid of the massed and dreadful helplessness that cumbered the ground on which it trod! … Displacement of population—the daily, stilted phrase—had become to him a
