A Pair of Blue Eyes

Set in a remote coastal parish in Cornwall, the story follows Elfride Swancourt, a sheltered, impulsive young woman of about nineteen with striking blue eyes. She has spent her entire life at Endelstow Rectory with her widowed father, the Reverend Christopher Swancourt, a genial but snobbish clergyman preoccupied with genealogy. Her isolation has left her with no experience of courtship or knowledge of the wider world.

One winter evening, Stephen Smith, a boyish and handsome architect's assistant barely past twenty, arrives at the rectory, sent by his London employer to survey the local church for restoration. Elfride, serving as hostess while her father is bedridden with gout, is delighted to find the London professional so young and gentle. They are immediately drawn to each other. Mr. Swancourt, impressed by Stephen's second name "Fitzmaurice," assumes the young man belongs to an ancient county family, an assumption Stephen weakly lets stand.

Stephen departs for London with an invitation to return in August. When he returns that summer, the relationship accelerates. He declares his love and they share their first kiss on the sea-cliffs, where Elfride loses one of her favorite earrings. Stephen speaks constantly of his friend and mentor Henry Knight, a literary reviewer. He then reveals his secret: His father is John Smith, Lord Luxellian's master-mason, and his family is of humble working-class origins. Elfride insists she loves him regardless. When news of John Smith's injury forces Stephen to reveal the connection to Mr. Swancourt, the rector is furious and forbids the match, considering the social gulf intolerable.

In despair, the couple plan a secret elopement. Elfride travels by train to Plymouth and then to London to marry Stephen, but his marriage license is valid only in his London parish. During the journey, her excitement collapses into dread. At Paddington station she panics and insists on returning home immediately. At St. Launce's station the next morning, Mrs. Jethway, the mother of Felix Jethway, a young farmer who once loved Elfride and died of consumption, stares at Elfride from a bench, apparently recognizing her.

Mr. Swancourt returns with his own secret: He has married Mrs. Charlotte Troyton, the wealthy widow from the neighboring manor, who brings a substantial fortune and social connections. Elfride realizes she cannot confess her elopement, and the episode recedes into her past. Stephen visits Knight at his chambers in London. Knight is about thirty, intellectually formidable but personally inexperienced with women. Stephen tells Knight he is in love and accepts a professional position in Bombay. Among Knight's review books, Stephen notices Elfride's novel but says nothing about his connection to her.

Nearly three-quarters of a year passes. Stephen thrives in India while Mrs. Swancourt introduces Elfride to London society and arranges the publication of her novel. When the novel receives a harsh review in The Present, a literary journal, Elfride writes a reply to the anonymous critic, who turns out to be Knight, Mrs. Swancourt's distant relative, already invited to Endelstow. Elfride recognizes him as Stephen's friend but keeps the coincidence to herself.

Knight arrives at Endelstow and proves intellectually rigorous and bluntly honest, often correcting Elfride and inadvertently wounding her by expressing preferences contrary to her own attributes. Without realizing it, he describes Stephen as a friend in India who fell in love and went to Bombay. That evening, Elfride goes to bed without thinking of Stephen for the first time. Knight leaves for Ireland but realizes he has fallen in love, valuing what he believes is her complete romantic innocence. He purchases earrings for her, but Elfride refuses them out of conflicted loyalty to Stephen. Letters arrive announcing Stephen's imminent return to England.

On the day Stephen is expected, Elfride goes to the cliffs to watch for his steamboat. Knight encounters her there by chance. His hat blows over the cliff edge; he goes after it and becomes trapped on the nearly vertical cliff face, unable to climb back up. He clings to tufts of sea-pink, a coastal wildflower, contemplating death while staring at a fossilized trilobite, an ancient sea creature, in the rock. Elfride, finding no one to help, strips off her undergarments and fashions them into a rope. Knight uses the improvised rope to climb to safety. In the overwhelming aftermath they embrace passionately, and for Elfride the embrace constitutes a decisive commitment to Knight over Stephen. She watches the steamboat round the point and disappear.

Stephen arrives that evening and waits for Elfride at the church as arranged, but she does not come. He finds his deposit of two hundred pounds returned as a cheque. A week later, he witnesses Knight with his arm around Elfride in a garden pavilion. Mrs. Jethway lurks nearby, whispering bitterly about Elfride's faithlessness. Stephen is devastated but defends Elfride's character.

When they encounter Stephen in the Luxellian family vault, opened for Lady Luxellian's burial, Knight introduces Elfride as his fiancée. Stephen treats Elfride as a near-stranger to protect her secret. Elfride resolves to confess to Knight but, when the moment comes, confesses only that she misrepresented her age by one year. Knight praises absolute honesty as the quality he values most, making the real secret even more impossible to reveal. He proposes, and Elfride accepts. Knight's doubts grow, however, when Elfride inadvertently reveals her earring was lost during intimacy with another man.

Knight's suspicions deepen when Mrs. Jethway dies in the collapse of the undermined church tower. A posthumous letter from Mrs. Jethway accuses Elfride of a secret elopement with Stephen. Knight confronts Elfride, who admits she ran away with a man, went to London overnight, and returned unmarried. Knight tells her they cannot marry and leaves Endelstow without revealing he is going for good. Elfride follows him to London in desperation, begging him not to abandon her, but her father arrives, furious, and takes her away. Knight concludes he cannot marry a woman whose innocence was an illusion and leaves for the Continent.

Fifteen months later, Knight and Stephen meet by chance in Hyde Park. Knight examines Stephen's sketchbooks and discovers every female saint drawn with Elfride's face. Stephen admits the drawings depict Elfride, and Knight is astonished to learn his former protégé was the previous lover. Each man hides his continuing love behind a pretense of indifference. The next morning, both independently decide to return to Endelstow to propose to Elfride. They discover each other on the same westbound train, each declaring his intention. Throughout the journey, a dark funeral van is attached to their train.

At Camelton, the station nearest Endelstow, men in black cloaks emerge from the van carrying a bright satin-wood coffin. Mr. Swancourt, looking years older, accompanies the procession. The coffin contains his daughter. At the Welcome Home inn, they learn the rest: After Knight left, Elfride became despairing and ill. Lord Luxellian, whose first wife had died, courted her gently, always accompanied by his two young daughters who adored her. Elfride married him partly out of duty and hopelessness and died in London of a miscarriage. The next day, after the funeral, Knight and Stephen descend into the vault. Beside Elfride's coffin, they find Lord Luxellian prostrate with grief. They silently withdraw, recognizing that another man stands nearer to Elfride than either of them, and walk together back down the valley.