JAFFERY

CHAPTER I


I received a letter the day before yesterday from my old friend, Jaffery
Chayne, which has inspired me to write the following account of that
dear, bull-headed, Pantagruelian being. I must say that I have been
egged on to do so by my wife, of whom hereafter. A man of my somewhat
urbane and dilettante temperament does not do these things without being
worried into them. I had the inspiration, however. I told Barbara (my
wife), and she agreed, at the time, dutifully, that I ought to record
our friend Jaffery's doings. But now, womanlike, she declares that the
first suggestion, the root germ of the idea, came from her; that the
"egging on" is merely the vain man's way of misdefining a woman's serene
insistence; that she has given me, out of her intimate knowledge, all
the facts of the story--although Jaffery Chayne and Adrian Boldero and
poor Tom Castleton, and others involved in the imbroglio, counted
themselves as my bosom cronies, while she, poor wretch (a man must get
home somewhere), was in the nursery; and that, finally, if she had been
taught English grammar and spelling at school, she would have dispensed
entirely with my pedantic assistance and written the story herself.
Anyhow, man-like, I am broad minded enough to proclaim that it doesn't
very much matter. Man and wife are one. She thinks they are one wife. I
know they are one husband. Between speculation and knowledge why so
futile a thing as a quarrel? I proceed therefore to my originally
self-appointed and fantastic task.

But on reflection, before beginning, I must honestly admit that if it
had not been for Barbara I should write of these things with
half-knowledge. Sex is a queer and incalculable solvent of human
confidence. There are certain revelations that men will make only to a
man, certain revelations likewise that women will make only to a man. On
the other hand, a woman is told things by her sister women and her
brother men which, but for her, would never reach a man's ears. So by
combining the information obtained from our family encyclopædia under
the feminine heading of China with that obtained under the masculine
heading of Philosophy, I can, figuratively speaking, like the famous
student, issue my treatise on Chinese Philosophy.