So we talked! At least, I talked and my friend concurred, or demurred, or very often digested my wisdom in silence--the silence that, betwixt friends, means as much or even more than speech. And I remember, one still evening, the patches of dry snow lying on the grass of the sidewalk and the lawns, as we came wearily up Van Diemen's Avenue after a tramp to Echo Lake, there had been a long silence after I had been theorizing on the subject of Mrs. Carville. I am always listened to indulgently on the subject of women! It is tacitly taken for granted that my knowledge of the subject is exclusively theoretical. I do not contest this, because the converse of the proposition, that all married men are practical experts, is so absurd that nobody ventures to state it. I had been discussing Mrs. Carville and the probable effect of American life upon her when she should have more leisure to cultivate herself. My point was that she might possibly have some influence upon her husband. And this was followed, as I have said, by a long silence.
"No," said Mac, at length, "I don't think so." I had almost forgotten what we were talking about, for I could already see that the lamps in the dining-room were lighted and shadows moving on the blind.
"Well," he answered. "Of course, we don't know her very well, but we do know him. And I should say that the woman doesn't live who could shift him from what he proposed to do. You may not see it in the same way, but it is plain enough. His brother," went on my friend with a laugh, "hasn't all the devil in the family, and don't you think it."
And we came up to the door and sat down in the porch to take off our boots. I confess this view was to me entirely novel. I felt chagrined that I had been so lacking in intelligence as to miss so obvious a possibility. I had a faint, uneasy suspicion that my friend was laughing at me. But the idea was so pregnant with interest that I soon forgot my mortification. Before I had got my boots completely off I was away on a tour of this new and fascinating region. I leaned back in my chair and gazed pensively towards the faint glare of New York City. It was true, I reflected, that we had at the very first postulated a certain friction between our neighbour and his wife. But then we had not listened to the love story of our neighbour and his wife. I thought, as I sat there, that I saw the point I had missed. Mr. Carville, supposing he had what my friend called the devil in the family, would not exploit it while telling us the story of his life. And so I, who had abandoned myself to the enjoyment of his peculiar mentality, had forgotten that he might have, all the time, some of the "devil" after all, that he might, in short, be difficult to live with. I hesitated to use the word "faults." Mr. Carville himself had seemed to imply that the ordinary matrimonial disagreements were as inevitable and as fundamental as cosmic disturbances. Perhaps they were. "Devil," however, was another matter.