“Quite.”
“Because if there are any final touches to put to your oratorio, you’d better do them to-day. The piano won’t be there to-morrow. I’ve made up my mind to sell it at once.”
“Silly thing to do,” said Dr. O’Grady. “You won’t get half what it’s worth if you sell it in a hurry like that.”
“Even if I have to pay someone to take it away,” said the Major, “I shall make a good bargain. It’s better to lose a little money than to spend the rest of my life in a lunatic asylum.”
“You know your own business best, of course, and if you think you can preserve what little intelligence you have by giving Thady Gallagher or some other fellow a present of your piano—”
“I think I can save myself from being turned into a gibbering maniac,” said the Major, “by making sure that you’ll never have the chance of composing music in my house again. Since eight o’clock this morning you’ve been at it. I could hear you whenever I went, mixing up hymns and waltzes and things with ‘God Save the King.’ I tried to get a bit of lunch at half past one, but I had to fly from the house.”
“It’s over now anyhow,” said Dr. O’Grady. “And you needn’t sell the piano. I’ve given up the idea of producing a new version of that tune for the Lord-Lieutenant. I find that the thing can’t be done in the time. I’m going to give him ‘Rule Britannia’ instead.”
“With variations?”
“No. Quite plain. It’ll do him just as well as the other. In fact from his point of view it’s rather the more patriotic tune of the two, and there won’t be any local objection to it because nobody can possibly recognise it.”
It was in this way that Dr. O’Grady showed the true greatness of his mind. A weaker man, daunted by the difficulty of arranging “God Save the King” in such a way as to suit all tastes, might have given up the attempt to provide a musical welcome for the Lord-Lieutenant. A man of narrow obstinacy, the kind of man who is really like a pig, would have persevered, in spite of Constable Moriarty’s warning, in trying to teach his variations to the town band. Dr. O’Grady, knowing that the main thing was the success of his general scheme, turned from a tune which presented insuperable difficulties, and fixed upon another, which would, he hoped, be comparatively easy to manage. The Major ought to have admired him; but did not He was in a condition of extreme nervous exasperation which rendered him unfit to admire anything.