“I couldn’t see what he did that was so special,” Buttercup’s father said. “He just fed them.” This was after dinner now, and the family was alone again.
“They must like him personally. I had a cat once that only bloomed when I fed him. Maybe it’s the same kind of thing.” Buttercup’s mother scraped the stew leavings into a bowl. “Here,” she said to her daughter. “Westley’s waiting by the back door; take him his dinner.”
Buttercup carried the bowl, opened the back door.
“Take it,” she said.
He nodded, accepted, started off to his tree stump to eat.
“I didn’t excuse you, Farm Boy,” Buttercup began. He stopped, turned back to her. “I don’t like what you’re doing with Horse. What you’renot doing with Horse is more to the point. I want him cleaned. Tonight. I want his hoofs varnished. Tonight. I want his tail plaited and his ears massaged. This very evening. I want his stables spotless. Now. I want him glistening, and if it takes you all night, it takes you all night.”
“As you wish.”
She slammed the door and let him eat in darkness.
“I thought Horse had been looking very well, actually,” her father said.
Buttercup said nothing.
“You yourself said so yesterday,” her mother reminded her.
“I must be overtired,” Buttercup managed. “The excitement and all.”
“Rest, then,” her mother cautioned. “Terrible things can happen when you’re overtired. I was overtired the night your father proposed.” Thirty-four to twenty-two and pulling away.
Buttercup went to her room. She lay on her bed. She closed her eyes.
And the Countess was staring at Westley.
Buttercup got up from bed. She took off her clothes. She washed a little. She got into her nightgown. She slipped between the sheets, snuggled down, closed her eyes.
The Countess was still staring at Westley!
Buttercup threw back the sheets, opened her door. She went to the sink by the stove and poured herself a cup of water. She drank it down. She poured another cup and rolled its coolness across her forehead. The feverish feeling was still there.
How feverish? She felt fine. She was seventeen, and not even a cavity. She dumped the water firmly into the sink, turned, marched back to her room, shut the door tight, went back to bed. She closed her eyes.
The Countess would not stop staring at Westley!
Why?Why in the world would the woman in all the history of Florin who was in all ways perfect be interested in the farm boy. Buttercup rolled around in bed. And there simply was no other way of explaining that look—shewas interested. Buttercup shut her eyes tight and studied the memory of the Countess. Clearly, something about the farm boy interested her. Facts were facts. Butwhat ? The farm boy had eyes like the sea before a storm, but who cared about eyes? And he had pale blond hair, if you liked that sort of thing. And he was broad enough in the shoulders, but not all that 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, andpeople 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 thefarm boy was staring back at theCountess . 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 waslooking 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 evenone 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 memaaaaaaaad .”
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.