The Princess Bride

much broader than the Count. And certainly he was muscular, but anybody would be muscular who slaved all day. And his skin was perfect and tan, but that came again from slaving; in the sun all day, who wouldn't be tan? And he wasn't that much taller than the Count either, although his stomach was flatter, but that was because the farm boy was younger.

Buttercup sat up in bed. It must be his teeth. The farm boy did have good teeth, give credit where credit was due. White and perfect, particularly set against the sun-tanned face.

Could it have been anything else? Buttercup concentrated. The girls in the village followed the farm boy around a lot, whenever he was making deliveries, but they were idiots, they followed anything. And he always ignored them, because if he'd ever opened his mouth, they would have realized that was all he had, just good teeth; he was, after all, exceptionally stupid.

It was really very strange that a woman as beautiful and slender and willowy and graceful, a creature as perfectly packaged, as supremely dressed as the Countess should be hung up on teeth that way. Buttercup shrugged. People were surprisingly complicated. But now she had it all diagnosed, deduced, clear. She closed her eyes and snuggled down and got all nice and comfortable, and people don't look at other people the way the Countess looked at the farm boy because of their teeth.

'Oh,' Buttercup gasped. 'Oh, oh dear.'

Now the farm boy was staring back at the Countess. He was feeding the cows and his muscles were rippling the way they always did under his tanned skin and Buttercup was standing there watching as the farm boy looked, for the first time, deep into the Countess's eyes.

Buttercup jumped out of bed and began to pace her room. How could he? Oh, it was all right if he looked at her, but he wasn't looking at her, he was looking at her.

'She's so old,' Buttercup muttered, starting to storm a bit now. The Countess would never see thirty again and that was fact. And her dress looked ridiculous out in the cowshed and that was fact too.

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.'