When on Saturdays
the streets were filled with people, he stood on the corners giving
gratuitous performances of his magical art with cards and coins, and
eyeing country girls in the crowd. Once, a woman, the town stationer's
wife, shouted at him, calling him a lazy lout, whereupon he threw a coin
in the air, and when it did not come down rushed toward her shouting, "She
has it in her stocking." When the stationer's wife ran into her shop and
banged the door the crowd laughed and shouted with delight.
Telfer had a liking for the tall, grey-eyed, loitering McCarthy and
sometimes sat with him discussing a novel or a poem; Sam in the background
listened eagerly. Valmore did not care for the man, shaking his head and
declaring that such a fellow could come to no good end.
The rest of the town agreed with Valmore, and McCarthy, knowing this,
sunned himself in the town's displeasure. For the sake of the public furor
it brought down upon his head he proclaimed himself a socialist, an
anarchist, an atheist, a pagan. Among all the McCarthy boys he alone cared
greatly about women, and he made public and open declarations of his
passion for them. Before the men gathered about the stove in Wildman's
grocery store he would stand whipping them into a frenzy by declaring for
free love, and vowing that he would have the best of any woman who gave
him the chance.
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