The Peppered Moth Read Online Free PDF Page B

her, for in the Beginning was the Word. Miss Hackett at Big Sunday School did not know what they were either, though she had pretended that she did, and had spitefully and fruitlessly warned Bessie against too much random reading of the Old Testament.)
    Bessie rambled on about trumpets in the wilderness, and held conversations with Mr Pickwick and Mr Tupman over gallons of beer and oysters, in smoky snuggeries and hostelries. This should have worried her parents, and it did. Her mother waited on her, and her little sister Dora eagerly ran errands for her. Dora, insensitive, sturdy, a little carthorse, not a highly strung thoroughbred, failed to catch the virus. Dora would have felt proud of her resistance and resilience had not Bessie by now managed to persuade her that they were somehow contemptible. Health, in Bessie’s view, was rude, and therefore the healthy Dora was inferior. Dora, who looked up to her big sister, had come to believe this. Her earlier moments of rebellion had been crushed. No longer would she dare or even wish to dare to tear a page out of one of Bessie’s precious books. Gone were the days when she would plead with Bessie to play with her instead of sitting there endlessly reading. She took her big sister at her own estimate, and accepted her superiority. So we cast ourselves in castes, even when our society fails to provide them.
    Bessie’s mother Ellen waited and watched, for the shame of a dead daughter would have been a black mark, a distress, a pointing finger. Did Ellen suffer during this crisis? Maybe she did, but honestly one would not have been able to tell the difference.
    Bessie tossed and turned in the vast bed, which did not creak under her wasted body as it creaked under the weight of her stout parents. She could think of worse fates than dying here, admired and lamented by all. The Dairyman’s Daughter, by such means, had achieved fame, if not immortality, but Bessie was not yet ready to depart happily and to leave a shining track behind her. She decided that on balance it would be better to survive. If life took a turn for the worse, she could always fall back on her old familiar, bronchitis, as she already did every winter, and regain this lassitude, this luxury, this queenly attendance.
    And so she recovered, slowly regaining her strength through an exceptionally cold winter, pampered by a fire in the grate and a solid round hot-water bottle of cream and brown stone. Dr Marr, who paid regular and courteous attendance, was impressed by her steady progress: in the first four days he had despaired of her. But one of the oddest features of this epidemic was that it killed more healthy adults than it killed children and old people. Again, this has never been explained, though it certainly puzzled Dr Marr. He was particularly attentive to Bessie, for he already knew her well, through her many previous illnesses, and, like the staff of Breaseborough Secondary School, he had a fondness for her. He supplemented the meagre wartime diet by malted milk, and beef tea from his own larder.
    Dora in the meantime made do with bread and cheese. Dora liked bread and cheese. In fact, Dora was a stubborn little eater, and in her early years ate nothing but bread and cheese. She was labelled Mousie by her mother: the nickname was not intended as a compliment, but Dora seized on this small crumb of differentiation as a mark of affection, and she may have been right to do so. Not many compliments came her way, and she had to make the best of what was on offer.
    It is surprising that Dora did not contract scurvy, if her recollections of her own early diet are accurate.
    It was a small town, in those days. (It is still a small town.) In those days, Dr Marr knew all his patients, and paid them home visits when he was needed. It did not cross his mind that there was any other way of conducting his professional life. He saw most of his flock through the flu. Breaseborough did not suffer as badly as Leeds,