The Princess Bride (7 page)

Buttercup fell onto her bed and clutched her pillow across her breasts. The dress was ridiculous before it ever got to the cowshed. The Countess looked rotten the minute she left the carriage, with her too big painted mouth and her little piggy painted eyes and her powdered skin and . . . and . . . and . . .

Flailing and thrashing, Buttercup wept and tossed and paced and wept some more, and there have been three great cases of jealousy since David of Galilee was first afflicted with the emotion when he could no longer stand the fact that his neighbor Saul’s cactus outshone his own. (Originally, jealousy pertained solely to plants, other people’s cactus or ginkgoes, or, later, when there was grass, grass, which is why, even to this day, we say that someone is green with jealousy.) Buttercup’s case rated a close fourth on the all-time list.

It was a very long and very green night.

She was outside his hovel before dawn. Inside, she could hear him already awake. She knocked. He appeared, stood in the doorway. Behind him she could see a tiny candle, open books. He waited. She looked at him. Then she looked away.

He was too beautiful.

“I love you,” Buttercup said. “I know this must come as something of a surprise, since all I’ve ever done is scorn you and degrade you and taunt you, but I have loved you for several hours now, and every second, more. I thought an hour ago that I loved you more than any woman has ever loved a man, but a half hour after that I knew that what I felt before was nothing compared to what I felt then. But ten minutes after that, I understood that my previous love was a puddle compared to the high seas before a storm. Your eyes are like that, did you know? Well they are. How many minutes ago was I? Twenty? Had I brought my feelings up to then? It doesn’t matter.” Buttercup still could not look at him. The sun was rising behind her now; she could feel the heat on her back, and it gave her courage. “I love you so much more now than twenty minutes ago that there cannot be comparison. I love you so much more now than when you opened your hovel door, there cannot be comparison. There is no room in my body for anything but you. My arms love you, my ears adore you, my knees shake with blind affection. My mind begs you to ask it something so it can obey. Do you want me to follow you for the rest of your days? I will do that. Do you want me to crawl? I will crawl. I will be quiet for you or sing for you, or if you are hungry, let me bring you food, or if you have thirst and nothing will quench it but Arabian wine, I will go to Araby, even though it is across the world, and bring a bottle back for your lunch. Anything there is that I can do for you, I will do for you; anything there is that I cannot do, I will learn to do. I know I cannot compete with the Countess in skills or wisdom or appeal, and I saw the way she looked at you. And I saw the way you looked at her. But remember, please, that she is old and has other interests, while I am seventeen and for me there is only you. Dearest Westley—I’ve never called you that before, have I?—Westley, Westley, Westley, Westley, Westley—darling Westley, adored Westley, sweet perfect Westley, whisper that I have a chance to win your love.” And with that, she dared the bravest thing she’d ever done: she looked right into his eyes.

He closed the door in her face.

Without a word.

Without a word.

Buttercup ran. She whirled and burst away and the tears came bitterly; she could not see, she stumbled, she slammed into a tree trunk, fell, rose, ran on; her shoulder throbbed from where the tree trunk hit her, and the pain was strong, but not enough to ease her shattered heart. Back to her room she fled, back to her pillow. Safe behind the locked door, she drenched the world with tears.

Not even
one
word. He hadn’t had the decency for that. “Sorry,” he could have said. Would it have ruined him to say “sorry”? “Too late,” he could have said.

Why couldn’t he at least have said something?

Buttercup thought very hard about that for a moment. And suddenly she had the answer: he didn’t talk because the minute he opened his mouth, that was it. Sure he was handsome, but dumb? The minute he had exercised his tongue, it would have all been over.

“Duhhhhhhh.”

That’s what he would have said. That was the kind of thing Westley came out with when he was feeling really sharp. “Duhhhhhhh, tanks, Buttercup.”

Buttercup dried her tears and began to smile. She took a deep breath, heaved a sigh. It was all part of growing up. You got these little quick passions, you blinked, and they were gone. You forgave faults, found perfection, fell madly; then the next day the sun came up and it was over. Chalk it up to experience, old girl, and get on with the morning. Buttercup stood, made her bed, changed her clothes, combed her hair, smiled, and burst out again in a fit of weeping. Because there was a limit to just how much you could lie to yourself.

Westley wasn’t stupid.

Oh, she could pretend he was. She could laugh about his difficulties with the language. She could chide herself for her silly infatuation with a dullard. The truth was simply this: he had a head on his shoulders. With a brain inside every bit as good as his teeth. There was a reason he hadn’t spoken and it had nothing to do with gray cells working. He hadn’t spoken because, really, there was nothing for him to say.

He didn’t love her back and that was that.

The tears that kept Buttercup company the remainder of the day were not at all like those that had blinded her into the tree trunk. Those were noisy and hot; they pulsed. These were silent and steady and all they did was remind her that she wasn’t good enough. She was seventeen, and every male she’d ever known had crumbled at her feet and it meant nothing. The one time it mattered, she wasn’t good enough. All she knew really was riding, and how was that to interest a man when that man had been looked at by the Countess?

It was dusk when she heard footsteps outside her door. Then a knock. Buttercup dried her eyes. Another knock. “Whoever is that?” Buttercup yawned finally.

“Westley.”

Buttercup lounged across the bed. “Westley?” she said. “Do I know any West—oh,
Farm
Boy, it’s you, how droll!” She went to her door, unlocked it, and said, in her fanciest tone, “I’m ever so glad you stopped by, I’ve been feeling just ever so slummy about the little joke I played on you this morning. Of course you knew I wasn’t for a moment serious, or at least I thought you knew, but then, just when you started closing the door I thought for one dreary instant that perhaps I’d done my little jest a bit too convincingly and, poor dear thing, you might have thought I meant what I said when of course we both know the total impossibility of that ever happening.”

“I’ve come to say good-by.”

Buttercup’s heart bucked, but she still held to fancy. “You’re going to sleep, you mean, and you’ve come to say good night? How thoughtful of you, Farm Boy, showing me that you forgive me for my little morning’s tease; I certainly appreciate your thoughtfulness and—”

He cut her off. “I’m leaving.”

“Leaving?” The floor began to ripple. She held to the doorframe. “Now?”

“Yes.”

“Because of what I said this morning?”

“Yes.”

“I frightened you away, didn’t I? I could kill my tongue.” She shook her head and shook her head. “Well, it’s done; you’ve made your decision. Just remember this: I won’t take you back when she’s done with you, I don’t care if you beg.”

He just looked at her.

Buttercup hurried on. “Just because you’re beautiful and perfect, it’s made you conceited. You think people can’t get tired of you, well you’re wrong, they can, and she will, besides you’re too poor.”

“I’m going to America. To seek my fortune.” (This was just after America but long after fortunes.) “A ship sails soon from London. There is great opportunity in America. I’m going to take advantage of it. I’ve been training myself. In my hovel. I’ve taught myself not to need sleep. A few hours only. I’ll take a ten-hour-a-day job and then I’ll take another ten-hour-a-day job and I’ll save every penny from both except what I need to eat to keep strong, and when I have enough I’ll buy a farm and build a house and make a bed big enough for two.”

“You’re just crazy if you think she’s going to be happy in some run-down farmhouse in America. Not with what she spends on clothes.”

“Stop talking about the Countess! As a special favor. Before you drive me
maaaaaaaad
.”

Buttercup looked at him.

“Don’t you understand anything that’s going on?”

Buttercup shook her head.

Westley shook his too. “You never have been the brightest, I guess.”

“Do you love me, Westley? Is that it?”

He couldn’t believe it. “Do I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches. If your love were—”

“I don’t understand that first one yet,” Buttercup interrupted. She was starting to get very excited now. “Let me get this straight. Are you saying my love is the size of a grain of sand and yours is this other thing? Images just confuse me so—is this universal business of yours bigger than my sand? Help me, Westley. I have the feeling we’re on the verge of something just terribly important.”

“I have stayed these years in my hovel because of you. I have taught myself languages because of you. I have made my body strong because I thought you might be pleased by a strong body. I have lived my life with only the prayer that some sudden dawn you might glance in my direction. I have not known a moment in years when the sight of you did not send my heart careening against my rib cage. I have not known a night when your visage did not accompany me to sleep. There has not been a morning when you did not flutter behind my waking eyelids. . . . Is any of this getting through to you, Buttercup, or do you want me to go on for a while?”

“Never stop.”

“There has not been—”

“If you’re teasing me, Westley, I’m just going to kill you.”

“How can you even dream I might be teasing?”

“Well, you haven’t once said you loved me.”

“That’s all you need? Easy. I love you. Okay? Want it louder?
I love you
. Spell it out, should I? I ell-oh-vee-ee why-oh-you. Want it backward? You love I.”

“You are teasing now; aren’t you?”

“A little maybe; I’ve been saying it so long to you, you just wouldn’t listen. Every time you said ‘Farm Boy do this’ you thought I was answering ‘As you wish’ but that’s only because you were hearing wrong. ‘I love you’ was what it was, but you never heard, and you never heard.”

“I hear you now, and I promise you this: I will never love anyone else. Only Westley. Until I die.”

He nodded, took a step away. “I’ll send for you soon. Believe me.”

“Would my Westley ever lie?”

He took another step. “I’m late. I must go. I hate it but I must. The ship sails soon and London is far.”

“I understand.”

He reached out with his right hand.

Buttercup found it very hard to breathe.

“Good-by.”

She managed to raise her right hand to his.

They shook.

“Good-by,” he said again.

She made a little nod.

He took a third step, not turning.

She watched him.

He turned.

And the words ripped out of her:
”Without one kiss?”

They fell into each other’s arms.

There have been five great kisses since 1642 B.C., when Saul and Delilah Korn’s inadvertent discovery swept across Western civilization. (Before then couples hooked thumbs.) And the precise rating of kisses is a terribly difficult thing, often leading to great controversy, because although everyone agrees with the formula of affection times purity times intensity times duration, no one has ever been completely satisfied with how much weight each element should receive. But on any system, there are five that everyone agrees deserve full marks.

Well, this one left them all behind.

The first morning after Westley’s departure, Buttercup thought she was entitled to do nothing more than sit around moping and feeling sorry for herself. After all, the love of her life had fled, life had no meaning, how could you face the future, et cetera, et cetera.

But after about two seconds of that she realized that Westley was out in the world now, getting nearer and nearer to London, and what if a beautiful city girl caught his fancy while she was just back here moldering? Or, worse, what if he got to America and worked his jobs and built his farm and made their bed and sent for her and when she got there he would look at her and say, “I’m sending you back, the moping has destroyed your eyes, the self-pity has taken your skin; you’re a slobby-looking creature, I’m marrying an Indian girl who lives in a teepee nearby and is always in the peak of condition.”

Buttercup ran to her bedroom mirror. “Oh, Westley,” she said, “I must never disappoint you,” and she hurried downstairs to where her parents were squabbling. (Sixteen to thirteen, and not past breakfast yet.) “I need your advice,” she interrupted. “What can I do to improve my personal appearance.”

“Start by bathing,” her father said.

“And do something with your hair while you’re at it,” her mother said.

“Unearth the territory behind your ears.”

“Neglect not your knees.”

“That will do nicely for starters,” Buttercup said. She shook her head. “Gracious, but it isn’t easy being tidy.” Undaunted, she set to work.

Every morning she awoke, if possible by dawn, and got the farm chores finished immediately. There was much to be done now, with Westley gone, and more than that, ever since the Count had visited, everyone in the area had increased his milk order. So there was no time for self-improvement until well into the afternoon.

But then she really set to work. First a good cold bath. Then, while her hair was drying, she would slave after fixing her figure faults (one of her elbows was just too bony, the opposite wrist not bony enough). And exercise what remained of her baby fat (little left now; she was nearly eighteen). And brush and brush her hair.

Her hair was the color of autumn, and it had never been cut, so a thousand strokes took time, but she didn’t mind, because Westley had never seen it clean like this and wouldn’t he be surprised when she stepped off the boat in America. Her skin was the color of wintry cream, and she scrubbed her every inch well past glistening, and that wasn’t much fun really, but wouldn’t Westley be pleased with how clean she was as she stepped off the boat in America.