"But that was only a side issue. He let it be known, in the subtlest possible manner, that he was of ancient lineage. He had been heard to speak of Alexander of Macedon! Yes, you laugh; but you have not been to sea as long as I have. Such things are possible at sea. I have had a second engineer from Sunderland, a chap named Philip, who claimed Philip of Spain as his ancestor. There was Captain Gizzard, in my old London employ, who had a genealogical tree which traced the old fraud's descent from the Guiscards of Sicily. No! Captain Macedoine's illusions are common enough, I fancy, among men. It was only that instead of trying to master them and clear them away, he cultivated them until they grew to monstrous proportions and he lost sight of reality altogether. Or if you like, he was an artist, working upon himself as material, like those old masters we read about who devoted their lives to the accomplishment of obscure technical excellences that only the _cognoscenti_ could discover and enjoy."
"Possibly," murmured the Surgeon, smiling in the darkness of the evening.
"Well," said Mr. Spenlove, in a musing tone, "of course a certain latitude of analogy is permitted in describing one man to another, if we ever can describe him. That was how Macedoine struck me. The aim of his art was to conceal the artist, which I understand is sound aesthetics. And it was impossible not to admire his method, his style, if you like. There was nothing crude in it. So far from leaving nothing to chance, he left everything to chance. Take the case of his daughter. The brat in those days was a god-send to him. I used to think she was merely an invention, he was so circumstantial in his subtly shaded allusions. You might say that if she hadn't existed, the trend of his emotional development, the scheme on which he was engaged, would have compelled him to invent her. As I say, I did believe at one time he had invented her, for he was always inventing something. In some bewildering, indefinable way, we became aware, week by week, month by month, of a fresh touch, a new phase of Captain Macedoine. I don't pretend to know what final frame he proposed to give to the magnificent picture he was making. Perhaps he didn't know himself. Perhaps he had no ultimate design. Anyhow we never had it, for as I said, the company was absorbed and we all had to come home.