But in spite of the amiable devotion of her friends and their assurances that no jury alive would convict her, and in spite of her complete faith in Dwight Rush, the prospect of several months in jail was almost insupportable to Mrs. Balfame, and haunted by horrid fears. She made up her mind again and again not to read the newspapers, and she read them morning and night. She knew what this terrible interest in her meant. Not a talesman in the length and breadth of Brabant County who could swear truthfully that he had formed no opinion on the case. Other murder cases had been tossed aside after a few days' tepid sensation, unnoticed thereafter save perfunctorily. It was her unhappy fate to prove an irresistible magnet to that monster the Public and its keeper the Press. Her hatred of both took form at times in a manner that surprised herself. She sprang out of bed at night muttering curses and pulling at her long braids of hair to relieve the congestion in her brain. She tore up the newspapers and stamped on them. She beat the bars before her windows and shook them, the while aware that if the doors of the jail were left open and the guards slept, she would do nothing so foolish as to attempt an escape.
Sometimes she wondered, dull with reaction or quick with fear, if she were losing her reason; or if she was, after all, a mere female whose starved nerves were springing up in every part of her like poisonous weeds after a long drought. Well, if that were the case, her admiring friends should never be the wiser.
But there were other moods. As time wore on, she grew to be humbly grateful to these friends, a phenomenon more puzzling than her attacks of furious rebellion. Even Sam Cummack, possibly the only person who had sincerely loved the dead man and still stricken and indignant, but carefully manipulated by his wife, maintained a loud faith in her, and announced his intention to spend his last penny in bringing the real culprit to justice. Left to himself, he would in time no doubt have shared the opinion of the community, but his wife was a member of the grand army of diplomatists of the home. She was by no means sure of her sister-in-law's innocence, but she was determined that the family scandal should go no further than a trial, if Mr. Cummack's considerable influence on his fellow citizens could prevent it; and long practice upon the non-complex instrument in Mr. Cummack's head enabled her to strike whatever notes her will dictated. Mr. Cummack believed; and he not only convinced many of his wavering friends, but talked "both ways" to notable politicians in the late Mr. Balfame's party. Most of these gentlemen were convinced that "Mrs. B. done it," and were inclined to throw the weight of their influence against her if only to divert suspicion from themselves, several having experienced acute discomfort; but they agreed to "fix the jury" if Mr. Cummack and several other eminent citizens whom they inferred were "with him" would "come through in good shape." There the matter rested for the present.
Above all was Mrs. Balfame deeply, almost—but not quite—humbly grateful to Dwight Rush. Her interviews with him so far had been brief; later he would have to coach her, but at present his time was taken up with a thousand other aspects of the case, which promised to be a cause celèbre. He made love to her no more, but not for an instant did she doubt his intense personal devotion. He had, after consultation with two eminent criminal lawyers whom he could trust, decided that she should deny in toto the Kraus-Appel testimony, and stick to her original story. After all, it was her word, the word of a lady of established position in her community and of stainless character, against that of a surly German servant and her friends, all of them seething with hatred for those that were openly opposed to the cause of the Fatherland. He knew that he could make them ridiculous on the witness stand and was determined to secure a wholly American jury.
It was some three weeks after Mrs. Balfame's arrest that another blow fell. Dr. Anna's Cassie suddenly remembered that a fortnight or so before the murder Mrs. Balfame had called at the cottage one morning and asked permission to go into the living-room and write a note to the doctor. A moment or two after she had shut herself in, Cassie had gone out to the porch with her broom, and as she wore felt slippers and the front door stood open, she had made no noise. It was quite by accident that she had glanced through the window, and there she had seen Mrs. Balfame standing on a chair before a little cupboard in the chimney placing a bottle carefully between two other bottles. She had fully intended to tell her mistress of this strange performance, but as the doctor those days came home for but a few hours' sleep and too tired to be spoken to, not even taking her meals there, Cassie had postponed her little sensation and finally forgotten it.
When she did recall the incident under the pressure of the general obsession, she told it to a friend, who told it to another, who again imparted it, so that in due course it reached the ears of the alert Mr. Broderick. It was then he informed the public of the lost glass of lemonade and all the incidents pertaining thereto that had come to his knowledge. Mrs. Balfame's slightly "absurd explanation" was emphasised.
Once more the police were "on the job." The restored bottle was analysed and, ominously, found to contain plain water. Every bottle in the house of Mrs. Balfame was carried to the chemist. Mrs. Balfame laughed grimly at these sturdy efforts, but she knew that the story diminished her chance of acquittal. The public now condemned her almost to a man. The evidence would not be allowed in court,—Rush would see to that,—but every juror would have read it and formed his own opinion. Somewhat to her surprise Rush asked her for no explanation of this episode, and she thought it best not to volunteer one. To her other friends she dismissed the whole thing casually as a lie, no doubt inspired.
As the skies grew blacker, however, her courage mounted higher. Knitting calmed her nerves, and she had many long and lonely hours for meditation. Her friends kept her supplied with all the new novels, but her mind was more inclined to the war books, which she read seriously for the first time. On the whole, however, she preferred to knit for the wretched victims, and to think.
No one can suffer such a sudden and extreme change in his daily habits as a long sojourn in jail on the charge of murder without forming a new and possibly an astonished acquaintance with his inner self, and without undergoing what, superficially, appear to be strange changes, but are merely developments along new-laid tracks in sections of the brain hitherto regarded as waste lands.
Mrs. Balfame of Brabant County Jail was surprised to discover that she looked back upon Mrs. Balfame of Elsinore as a person of small aims, and rather too smugly bourgeoise. The world of Elsinore!