“We never tell everything”

“We never tell everything” is William Henry Devereaux, Jr.’s compact answer to the gap between intimacy and disclosure. Spoken first to Russell, it resists the demand that friendship—or family closeness—should amount to complete confession. When the thought returns after William Henry Devereaux, Jr. finds Russell asleep in Meg Quigley’s bed, it also becomes a test of the speaker’s own claim: the man who defends what remains unsaid is confronted with someone else’s undisclosed life.

The Exchange with Russell

Russell admits that his feelings are hurt because he has told William Henry Devereaux, Jr. everything. The reply is immediate and gently corrective: “Not everything, Russell,” followed by “We never tell everything.” The first sentence disputes Russell’s account of himself; the second broadens that correction into a general rule. Rather than reveal precisely what Russell has withheld, the exchange makes the existence of limits its point. Russell is surprised that William Henry Devereaux, Jr. recognizes this, as if the possibility of concealment belonged to Russell alone. The narrator’s response suggests that knowing people includes knowing that their accounts are incomplete.

The phrase does not simply accuse Russell of dishonesty. It distinguishes telling from telling all: a person can speak openly and still retain something. Russell’s hurt makes that distinction emotionally consequential. He believes that the amount he has shared creates an expectation of reciprocal disclosure, while William Henry Devereaux, Jr. declines that expectation without ending the conversation or denying their closeness. The expression protects a boundary, but its inclusive “we” also makes the boundary mutual. Neither man is singled out as uniquely secretive.

Secrecy and the Storyteller

The exchange follows William Henry Devereaux, Jr.’s refusal to explain why he hid in the ceiling above his office. He offers Russell an absurd account involving falling asleep and wetting his pants, then admits that he may be able to invent a more plausible explanation later. His reflection on his former reputation as a writer of realistic fictions connects the exchange to his skill at making stories, while also exposing the distance between a story’s plausibility and its truth. “Maybe some other time” postpones the explanation; the assertion that nobody tells everything gives that postponement a principle.

This context makes the phrase self-implicating. William Henry Devereaux, Jr. does not merely observe that other people keep secrets: he has just avoided giving Russell the actual account of his own embarrassment. The scene therefore lets the expression operate in two registers at once. It is a defense against being pressed for a disclosure, and a sly acknowledgment that he is already withholding one. His reference to fiction sharpens the distinction without resolving it: a convincing narrative can be composed, but its plausibility does not make it the truth.

Repetition and Reversal

The idea returns when William Henry Devereaux, Jr. finds Russell fast asleep in Meg Quigley’s bed. He wakes Russell by jiggling the bed with his foot; Russell is so disoriented that he looks around to establish where he is. William Henry Devereaux, Jr. reminds him, “See what I meant last night?” and recasts the earlier principle as “Nobody tells everything.” The wording has shifted from “we” to “nobody,” but the underlying claim remains: knowledge of another person is necessarily partial.

Now the saying carries the force of discovery. Russell had presented himself as the one who had told everything, while the scene reveals circumstances he had not shared. The passage does not explain what happened between Russell and Meg Quigley, and the expression does not supply that missing account. It marks the limit of what the discovery establishes: William Henry Devereaux, Jr. knows where he has found Russell, but the reader is not given a full explanation of how Russell got there or what it means for their relationships.

The return also reverses the earlier distribution of knowledge. William Henry Devereaux, Jr. had used the phrase to justify his own reserve; now he applies it to Russell. His anger is definite, though he doubts that he can call it righteous, since he is wearing Russell’s undershorts. That awkward, concrete detail punctures any simple moral superiority. The expression survives the reversal, but it does not make the speaker an impartial judge: he, too, remains caught in the compromised intimacy the saying describes.

Meaning in the Narrative

Across the two scenes, “We never tell everything” changes from a conversational boundary into a recurring interpretive rule. It first frames an incomplete account as ordinary, even shared, rather than as a betrayal unique to Russell. Its later echo lends the discovery of Russell in Meg Quigley’s bed a pointed irony, while stopping short of claiming more than the scene shows. The repetition links William Henry Devereaux, Jr.’s concealed embarrassment to Russell’s unexplained circumstances without equating them.

The expression also draws attention to how stories are made between people. Russell’s assertion that he has told everything is itself a story about the openness of their relationship; William Henry Devereaux, Jr.’s answer challenges its completeness, and the later discovery makes the challenge newly concrete. Yet the narrator’s own performance prevents the saying from becoming a tidy lesson about another person’s failures. Its lasting force lies in that double edge: disclosure creates closeness, but neither intimacy nor narrative can guarantee that everything has been said.