Read Online The Princess Bride by William Goldman - Free Book Online

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