IX. An Infernal Atonement
Mary elected to care for Daniel for the whole day while he slept. Fresh, clean water was brought in with a filled glass set aside for her hero when he woke up. Drenching a towel in the pail, she wrung it out and used it to wipe the sweat and grime off his handsome, coarse face, a process repeated every now and then to keep him cool in his repose.
Copying the identical salubrious routine she demonstrated during H.W.'s neediness, Mary stationed herself in the chair at the foot of the bed, thriving in the resolute onus of a loyal daughter. Time crept forward and day edged into darkened evening but she was sedentary at his bedside except when she tended to her most urgent needs, her eyes rarely taking leave of his virtually comatose form.
With a sputtering groan his inanition ended, life abruptly revived at last. Startled, she gasped, almost falling backwards to the floor. His rehabilitated eyes found her in the gloaming of the room.
"My sweet Mary," he muttered, voice still scratchy. "Were you here with me this entire time?"
She nodded solemnly.
Sitting up, he swung his long legs over the side of the bed and ran a hand through his sweat-matted hair. Waiting with requisite solicitude, she anticipated his every move. Etiolate and sickly, he looked stricken with influenza, but Mary was smart and knew it was called a hangover.
"Thank you for taking care of me," he said softly. "It means so much to me."
"You're welcome."
A hand suddenly covered his stomach and he battled for control over his body. By the passing second his illness worsened and although she never experienced alcoholism with her own immediate family, she'd lived it vicariously through the nasty details supplied by Anne Harper whose father also took his imbibition of whiskey to a detrimental extreme.
"Would you excuse me, please, Mary?" he requested before bolting from the cottage and away from the threshold.
Seconds later the sounds of retching and vomit splattering on the ground reached her ears. To the window she rushed and, although his back was to her, saw him hunched over, doubled up and vomiting profusely. Wincing at his vulnerable state, she was aghast at sight of the human frailty she never assumed him to possess. It was ridiculous of her to think him above such human, deleterious behaviour and, despite her rigid belief that he transcended it as her appointed guardian angel, the truth of his humanity was never more exposed to her as it was now.
Several prolonged minutes and a few more putrid ejaculations later, he rose to his full height. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand then lit a cigarette, probably to sweeten his breath with the tobacco. At that moment she remembered the reserved glass of water waiting for him. Clutching the glass, she joined him in the sylvan desert night.
"I brought you some water," she announced, offering him the glass.
Without pretence, he slaked his thirst, restoring his throat with the cool liquid.
"Thank you," he sighed, handing back the empty glass. "You're a good girl."
His tired eyes drifted from her to the murky sky and desert remoteness.
"You'll spend the night," he decided on her behalf. "It's too late for you to walk home alone and I'm not well enough to take you. You can take my bed, I don't use it so it's got clean sheets."
No protest was brought forth on Mary's part. It was no surprise that she voted to be with him than go back to the hellhole she theoretically called home. Home is where the heart is and the Plainview cottage was where hers had gone to stay. Daniel could be completely unconscious and she would be better off there with him. Right now her interest was the bed; she very much preferred that he slept in it next to her and held her as she fantasised him doing even before they'd ever met. But she kept her mouth shut, not taking this special time for granted, so that his recumbent form occupied the floor while hers mimicked his prostrate position in the bed's blissfull close proximity. Incapable of falling asleep straight away, she watched the steady rise and fall of his chest in the opaque moonlight. Fletcher's edict that his employer was as tough as nails was proved in the habitual way he slept face down on the hard wood floor. Yet the mere presence of the unbreakable titan provided her limpid comfort that was as soft as an angel's feathers. Whether he was there on the floor or in the bed with her when she finally slept, it was undoubtedly the best sleep the young girl ever had.
Speculated rumours about Henry's untimely and hasty retreat vivified Little Boston like a wildfire eating through the Californian plains as early as the next day. It began immediately when the roughnecks noticed his unaccounted absence at the office and later fanned out to the church congregation when a portion of the men attended the daily service then on to the rest of the townsfolk from the congregation.
Daniel did nothing to pacify the tension but instead fuelled it with his refusal to answer for his brother's whereabouts. Veracity was selective when a few times he explicated that Henry returned to New Mexico, which would have been credible had his sobriety been consistent and he had not told others that Henry went to visit Annabelle in Fon du Lac. Most of the time he simply growled that he didn't like to explain himself and held his tongue on the subject, which was just as well since he had already more or less incriminated himself in a way yet uncovered. The profligate oil man thrived on using the inflammatory gossip as a guessing game to drive the nosey citizens mad with wonder. And it served them right. Though equally curious, Mary understood it was none of her business while everyone else scampered for details they were not entitled to.
Added to it was the torrid rage father feebly disguised pertaining to her indecent night alone with Daniel. News of the matter meant an early Christmas for Eli whose scold and scorn oozed through his pretentious cool as puss would from an infected wound. This was the sort of revanche he had been waiting for. Patronising annotations spewed from his mouth about Daniel's profane request for a little girl who was nothing to him to spend the night alone with him. It was heavily implied that the boorish oil man had perverse appetites for her that should have him lynched. The frightening thing was that had Daniel not been a feared influence, the death proposal may have succeeded. She knew her brother didn't care about her, he just wanted to further his selfish cause. Eli was merciless and discriminate in what he heard so she saved her energy and did not bother correcting him despite the great sorrow in her heart that Daniel's stainless intent could be mangled so cruelly.
Hindsight mocked her with personal responsibility for lacking the common sense to argue against a morally impractical extended visit to the cottage. She had only wanted to be with him. By doing so, she meant him no other grievances than those he already suffered. They were Samson and Delilah: he an icon of strength while she, albeit inadvertently, brought him down. Was woman, no matter at what age, always the downfall of man, just as Eli and father taught? Outrage widened around her loved one and she detested with fervour the oblique stares people gave him or how they whispered when his back was turned. By the day's end his men pretended that nothing was out of the ordinary, deciding their livelihood was more important than a witch hunt against their employer and consoling Mary with their decision. Strong-armed authority provided Daniel with fierce loyalty if nothing else. Those particular roughnecks marked as gossipmongers realised their folly of biting the hand that fed and clothed them and hastily retracted their vilification. The men had known Daniel far longer and better than the Little Bostonians who dished hearsay for lack of any other entertainment. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil and no evil will be done.
The worst part was the way Eli looked at Daniel. Ever the holier-than-thou deuterogonist, her brother preached slanderous daily sermons against the impurity of man, always directing less than subtle allusions at Daniel. Hate for Eli accelerated Mary's pulse during each lecture and she knew it impossible for him to ever fall in her good graces again, even if his defamation verified true. The protracted animosity between Eli and Daniel festered during the week after Henry's disappearance like an infected wound, more than making up for its semi-dormant hiatus. It was as if Eli knew something and that Daniel was aware of his knowledge.
Turning an advertent eye from the spitefull keelhauling, she made headway in her daily lessons with Daniel and walked with him in the evenings as if nothing was out of the ordinary, two fugitives determined to ignore the hellfire that blazed at their backs. A more profound bond forged between them through their recent ordeals in H.W.'s absence. As long as Daniel did not mind then she would not relent and he had always been a man who cared not for what others thought of him. He sloughed off their noisome remarks like a snake shedding its skin and she admired him for it. Why should he care if he was doing nothing wrong?
On the Sunday following Henry's departure, the whole town plus the portion of Daniel's roughnecks who had converted into church members turned out for service. No different from any other Sunday except for one odd, misplaced visitor. Coming in from a pre-service ludic romp, Mary tried to furtively slip by Eli's front office alcove where she heard him in discussion with a handfull of subservient acolytes. Had it not been for her quick reflexes to stop short and dodge around the corner, she would have been descried by her brother when he glanced up in response to the intrusion of his freshly arrived and completely unpredicted visitor. Blanched as if an exorcised ghost had returned for vengeance, Eli rose, his chair screeching back and almost toppling over.
"Don't you dare hit me!" he ordered in stern warning, set to parry off any violence.
Both brother and sister poised for an assault by the incorrigible prospector but Daniel maintained a humbled composure.
"I'm looking for a fresh start, Eli," he announced in an unostentatious tone that shocked everyone else in the room. "I need your blessing…"
Taken aback, Mary's heart pounded like a horse's hooves while Eli's face was ornamented with a triumphant, condescending smile to the man before him. The girl left the men to seek her family in the main auditorium, knowing there was inchoate men's business afoot that this time she wanted no part of.
Fifteen minutes later, seated with her parents and Ruth at the centre of the room, she watched a sombre Daniel walk into the enclave of his enemies as if he was on trial for murder and the room full of people were there to testify against him. Old man Bandy, balefully serious, was with him. At once a domino effect disintegrated the solemn and quiet auditorium into a hailstorm of gossip, transforming the room into a humming beehive of disparagement. Those who did not see Daniel walk in were nudged by those who did. What sacrilege, they exclaimed, for the Devil to infiltrate their holy sanctuary!
The dubious pair of acquaintances seated themselves in the row in front of the Sundays. In disregard for what anyone else, including her family, thought, she tapped his shoulder and kissed his cheek when he turned. Her twin objective was to offer him solace and to show the others how trivial their self-righteous troublemaking was. They probably viewed Daniel's attendance as repentance for his illegal keeping of Mary over night, a success for Eli and his God, but Mary felt the iconoclast's request for the consecration was owed to a deeper conspiracy.
"Hello, Mary," was his muttered greeting. "Good morning to my sweetheart."
"Why are you here?" she inquired, hoping he would clue her in on his game.
But his disappointing reply was terse and plaintive.
"I've been shown the error of my ways."
The tone of his voice and hesitancy to make eye contact with her, going against his first rule of conduct, was an adequate hint that something was amiss; the sideways glare he administered to the oblivious Bandy suggested that the old man was the author of Daniel's contrition.
"I'll be right here," was her soothing whisper in his ear. "No matter what happens."
He answered with a slight appreciative nod then faced forward again. She positioned herself at the end of the pew beside Ruth who smiled compassionately at her. If anyone else believed in Daniel's innocence it was her sister and that was worth more to her than the belief of every Christian in Little Boston. Complacency was hard to come by in the room as Mary braced for what she knew would be Eli's chance for revenge.
During the opening hymns as Eli and the gaggle of servants he had conversed with earlier entered in a state of pious grandeur in claimant of superiority, Mary's eyes inexorably trained on Daniel who continued with no attempt in looking up at eye level.
"I truly wish everyone could be saved, don't you?" Eli wasted no time in declaiming and his devotees responded in the affirmative. "I'm afraid that's just not the case."
To ease her rowelled distress, Mary occupied herself with mental retaliations against Eli's hypocrisies while keeping her bearing as calm as an unrustled leaf.
Just shut up, Eli, you're the one who needs saving! But you can't save the Devil from his own fire, can you?
Eli was on a mission to burnish the figurative mud from his person and damn Daniel's soul in any way possible. There was favouritism in fate today with every member of the Third Revelation present, rallied by the preacher's false god. All had come to bear witness to the spectacle of the recusant oil man's salvation without knowledge of it beforehand, subconsciously drawn to the scent of presupposed blood about to be spilt.
Strange how everyone's here today! As if they willed it to happen, like they were witches with the third eye!
"The doctrine of universal salvation is a lie, isn't it?" he baited, to which the other holy rollers were fervent to agree.
This is like the inquisition Paul told me about in Europe! Mary compared. My poor Daniel! What is Eli going to do to him?
Softer, Eli rebutted the promise of his God to impress that he cared, "I wish everyone could be saved, but they won't. No, they won't. You will never be saved if you…"
"Reject the blood!" all the trained witch finder generals finished in unison.
Reject you, Eli! You're a scoundrel! You're the devil you preach about! Everyone's just too blind to see it!
"Good," the preacher commended, appeased that his years of brainwashing them was effective. Then came the moment Mary dreadfully anticipated: the predator was about to pounce on his prey. "Now is there a sinner here looking for salvation?" Quiet. "A new member?"
Dead silence. Daniel was not going to easily cave in and his willpower swelled her with unparalleled loyalty.
The fraudulent preacher was equally persistent: "I'll ask it again." More sternly: "Is there a sinner here looking for God?"
"Yes," Daniel's deep voice boomed as he stood up, hand raised.
The suddenness of his voice surprised Mary whose own tremulous hand was covered by a sympathetic one of Ruth's.
Daniel's man enough to take whatever Eli gives him! He is resilient! So am I!
A minuscule shred of confidence was added to her stormy mind by the contemplation but tears welled in her eyes nevertheless. Sensing this, Ruth squeezed her hand firmly. Daniel half-heartedly ambled to the stage where he reluctantly confronted the town he had swindled and offended, hands folded behind his back and head bowed in divorce of the impending shame. Doubtless he needed to force his dignity back a step to endure just the simple act of sitting inside the church during service.
"We have a sinner with us here who wishes for salvation!" vituperated Eli loudly and with far too much gusto as he joined Daniel on the stage.
This is going to be bad! Mary's throat inflamed with horror. We'll get through this together, Daniel!
"Daniel, are you a sinner?"
"Yes," her father figure agreed, quiet and difficult to hear.
He doesn't want to do this!
The little bastard Eli put the pressure on even greater.
"The Lord can't hear you, Daniel! Say it to him. Go ahead and speak to him. It's all right."
"Yes," Daniel played along, raising his voice that the acoustics of the auditorium amplified so all could hear, including a God who pretended to be deaf for the occasion.
Eli placed a hand of false reassurance upon Daniel and his little sister wanted to kick him in the shins for being cocky enough to touch him. Then he struck a low blow:
"Down on your knees. Pray to him." Anger fired up within the girl when she saw the aggrieved grimace crossing Daniel's face as he complied, his bad leg agonising him. Fully aware of Daniel's lameness, Eli callously exploited the Achilles' heel. "Look up to the sky and say it."
Eli, the imposture, was milking this for all that it was worth.
Daniel played along with the charade, looked directly at Eli and asked, "What do you want me to say?"
It was impossible for the child to be more proud of him. Defiant even when he knew he was not going to win. The question was ignored as Eli paced around his victim, a wildcat teasing its prey.
"Daniel, you've come here and you've brought good and wealth, but you have also brought your bad habits as a backslider," fustigated Eli, embellishing and airing all the dirty turpitudes he felt should be exoteric information. "You've lusted after women and you have abandoned your child." The mortal blow. "Your child, that you raised, you have abandoned all because he was sick and you have sinned. So say it now. I am a sinner."
Tenacity held the accused sinner's head high; occasionally his gaze dropped to the floor, his handsome face twisted in abstinence of retaliation. Eli had him backed into a corner, triggering his inherent instinct to fight his way out.
Never corner an animal, Eli, you're inviting trouble!
"I am a sinner," Daniel muttered with annoyance.
"Say it louder!"
Mary matched Daniel's furnace-hot wrath and scooted to the edge of the pew, propping her head up with an arm across the back of the one in front where Daniel had vacated only moments ago. Nobody's eyes left the ignominious scenario on stage as avid theatre-goers would anticipate a climatic final act. The breath of every man, woman and child in the church was imprisoned within their chests, waiting to see what happened next in the debasement of the nonconformist who swore his unctuous God was mightier than their heavenly one yet who now knelt at their God's feet to atone for his wrongs. It was an intriguing upheaval and each individual person garnered a wicked desire to put this man in his place. Little Boston had sold its soul to Daniel Plainview but now the roles were reversed it was Plainview who grovelled for the sale of his soul before Little Boston.
"I am a sinner," Daniel conformed, determined to keep his head high.
"I am a sinner!" accentuated Eli. "Louder, Daniel! I am a sinner!"
Daniel's patience was brittle and he looked as if he was about to detonate but he repeated the line again nevertheless. It still wasn't enough to compensate for the degradation of the mud bath weeks ago. Humiliation was a priceless poison dart: Daniel had castrated Eli in front of the roughnecks and now the ambitious preacher wanted to in turn emasculate his rival in front of his congregation. But her greatest relief was in knowing Eli's upper hand would never last for long because Daniel was beyond the man Eli ever hoped to come close to being. And maybe that was another reason he had so much hatred for her adopted father.
"I am sorry, Lord!" goaded the preacher.
"I am sorry, Lord."
"I want the blood!"
"I want the blood."
"You have abandoned your child," derogated Eli, punctuating the words with disgust for the man on his knees before him.
H.W. was a prohibited topic and Daniel had warned Eli once to take care in what he said about the boy. Mention of his son's name was equivalent to baiting a starving dog with fresh meat and Eli had foolishly offered his own flesh. Yet the hurting father figure repeated the line and checked his tranquil rage. It was known precisely where Daniel was the weakest and the vampiric Eli drew blood to invoke the feeding frenzy.
"I have abandoned my child," Daniel repeated, voice faltering. Already labelled a blackguard before every discriminate eye, being a negligent father was the one thing he did not want others to believe him to be because it was not true in the least. An immaculate reputation as a father was the one thing that mattered more to him than oil and power. Of all the lies that passed from his lips with the serpent's ease, this was the incurable wound.
"I will never backslide!"
"I will never backslide."
Enough, Eli, you've made your point! Damn you! Leave him alone!
"I was lost, but now I'm found!"
"I was lost, but now I'm found."
Daniel rebounded from the punishment but Eli went for the jugular a second time.
"I have abandoned my child," the unholy vessel pressed harder on the bruise.
The fingernails of Mary's right hand clawed the wood of the pew she leant on while their mirrored left handed ones sank into the corpulent part of Ruth's hand beneath her thumb. There was never a more lethal silence as this monumental but brief one in which the prospector passed her brother an inimical glare unsurpassed by any other preceding it. Never before had Mary witnessed such acidic emotion transmitted from one person to another and it burnt a hole through her body even though she was not the direct recipient. She did not want to imagine how it made Eli feel. The grueling crescent tension in the room was as stifling as the summer heat because of it.
Steadfast, Eli hissed, "Say it! Say it!"
"I abandoned my child," Daniel snarled.
"Say it louder!" scathed the inspired, abrasive cleric, taking an obscene enjoyment of the worst possible schadenfreude against a doting parent. "Say it louder!"
Whereas he previously did not want to give his enemy the satisfaction of riling him up, love eclipsed arrogance when H.W. was not the only thing Daniel abandoned as the mercurial oil man's infamous temper at last exploded, yet still controlled enough to not be in the format Mary had anticipated.
"I'VE ABANDONED MY CHILD!" roared Daniel at the top of his lungs, making Mary choke on a sob and Ruth squeeze her hand. "I'VE ABANDONED MY CHILD! I'VE ABANDONED MY BOY!"
The inquisitorial torture he underwent fractured her too and she whimpered, holding her breath untill she turned crimson and her lungs ached, stealthily wiping a tear from the corner of her eye with the end of her sleeve. Breaking Daniel wasn't rewarding enough for Eli. He wanted to further dismantle the already crumbling man, bend him to his will to claim victory before everyone, to make Daniel look like the bitch that he himself was and Mary wanted to put her eyes out at the blasphemy of the affair.
Not yet finished with making an example of the prospector, Eli thus delivered the coup de grace.
"Now beg for the blood!" he demanded.
Sickened by the sempiternal ordeal, the beaten angel was in no mood for being toyed with.
"Just give me the blood, Eli! Let me get out of here! Give me the blood, Lord, and let me get away!"
"Do you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour?"
"Yes, I do."
Then, with a high pitched shriek of "Get out of here, devil!" that scared Mary, the puritanical tyrant laid an open handed slap hard across Daniel's face, rendering the verbal confession short shrift.
She flinched and, as the entire church erupted into a chaotic revival, buried her face into the bend of her elbow to shield herself from Eli's orchidaceous violation of the man she cared about most in the world. This was not a baptism or a welcoming into the parishioners, it was a desecration. Each sharp slap across Daniel's face maimed her soul but the sounds could not be blocked, distinct even amid the uproar.
"Out, devil!" Eli denigerated in a harpy's screech. "Out, sin!"
The crack of another strike sent her into tears. Then her mood brightened as a ray of sun emerged through thick, black clouds when, amongst the disarray, she heard Daniel's voice sarcastically urging Eli to continue delivering the abuse with mocking of his own. He would not resile, not physically, not mentally. He was a warrior, a fighter who refused to go down no matter how trodden he was.
"Let me feel the power of the Lord, Eli!"
"Do you accept the Church of the Third Revelation as your spiritual guide?"
"Where is your Lord, Eli?"
"Get out of here, ghost! Get out! Go back to where you belong!"
"Where is he? There he is!"
Each sentence was accentuated with another anointing slap and every one made Mary recoil untill she was outright bawling, her face hidden from the rest of the room. Aware of what effect this spectacle was having on her younger sister, Ruth slid closer, securing an arm around her quaking shoulder.
"It's OK, Mary," Ruth murmured in her ear. "He'll be all right. He can take it. You know he can."
It mattered not. A gross misconception was to believe Daniel was not man enough to take it. Just because he was man enough to take it did not mean she wanted to bear witness to a vicious scavenger picking his bones clean. She did not want to watch it, or for him to undergo it at all. There was nothing she wanted more than to run on stage, shove Eli away and return his just desserts in the same cruel manner he was handling Daniel. She hated Eli. She wished he was dead. Furthermore, she wished she would be the one to kill him.
"Do you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour?" Eli pontificated again.
"Yes, I do," Daniel answered loud and clear.
"It's over, Mary," Ruth informed very quietly into her ear. "It's over."
Sniffling, Mary effaced the proof of her upset with the greatest discretion then raised her eyes in time to see Bandy pour the baptismal holy water over Daniel's backwards tilted head as Abel burst into song. Contrary to popular opinion the town was apt to expect, Daniel was not set aflame like a demon upon contact with the holy water. Aspersed alike by ultracrepidated defamation and holy water, Daniel survived Eli's brutal insensitivity and possessed a manner of victory nevertheless.
"Would you be free from the burden of sin? There's power in the blood…"
A mutinous glowering message was sent to her father while she wished he would stop singing because he was tone deaf and his voice most unpleasant. By the time her eyes rested back on Daniel he was struggling to stand, encumbered by the extensive time on his knees. When he finally succeeded, he turned to the simon-pure Eli whose nerve drained from him as he reverted to his caitiff truth. Failed by this unforeseen conflict that in retrospect was obvious, the wolf had not anticipated his sacrificial lamb to grow horns and strike back as a ram. The oil man was supposed to leave the stage quietly, accepting his defeat, or at least that was the presentiment the preacher had played out in his mind. Things never go as planned, however, and Daniel extended a hand which a terrified Eli reluctantly accepted in a handshake, the prospector drawing close to his enemy and muttering something meant only for Eli's ears. Whatever it was paled her brother's face as white as chalk.
Exhausted, Daniel departed from Eli and drifted back to his seat in a disassociated state through the serried auditorium of church servants blessing him with hosannas, praises and pats on the back, shoulders or arms. Every person present wanted to welcome him into the fold and strove to do so. At the end of the line, mother rose and embraced him before he finally was free to sit down.
Jealous that the attention the dragooned Daniel was receiving meant all eyes were turned away from him, Eli sought to recapture their interest.
"That's enough, that's enough now," he took command again with a regained orotund posture. "He must take the spirit in on his own. We have a new member."
Another round of hallelujahs and amens were proclaimed but Mary could wait no longer. Ignoring protocol and certain consequences, she threw her arms around his neck, nestled her face against him and held him tight. The cheek struck by Eli was an angry erubescent hue that burnt from the heat of her brother's fury and she wanted to extinguish the fire in that cheek with her kisses. Life was not worth living without risk, she declared in her head before pressing her lips gently against the incarnadine hand print. Downtrodden and deconstructed but purportedly cleansed of his evil, Daniel had been laid bare and exposed like a freak of nature inside a circus tent for everyone to see.
"My sweet Mary," he whispered, covering her hand with his comforting one. "My sweet, precious Mary. I love you so much."
"I love you," she returned as Eli hammered another nail in the coffin by publically mentioning the promised five thousand Daniel agreed to give him originally and already so long ago.
Neither she nor Daniel wasted any more precious time listening to him. Lost in their own world, they were the only two people in existence. Nothing else mattered except the feel of his clean skin, its permanent scent of oil, and his lips against her forehead. Parting from his hold and unwrapping her arms from around him was out of the question.
"I love you so much," she professed, choking back more tears. "I hate him for this."
"Don't cry, shh! We'll talk later."
Their voices were at an extreme low so that they could hear only each other but Mary's biological father was bothered by her very public display of affection for a man only recently saved, one who had an assumed unnatural love for the girl no less.
"Sit down, Mary," Abel instructed strictly, tugging her sleeve to obtain her attention. "You're disturbing Mr. Plainview and the rest of the congregation."
"Do as he says," Daniel told her softly. "We'll talk later. Be a good girl. For me."
Out of venerated deference, Mary yielded not to Abel but to Daniel and left her foster father with open unwillingness. There was nothing she would not do for her true father. She always abided by his word. Let everyone else draw their own conclusions, good or bad. If her rashness in supporting him brought others to believe he was a snake in human guise, then she drew her own verdict: Eden must have been a boring place before that serpent showed up.