Elizabeth poked at the dwindling fire in her Franklin stove. Would spring ever come? It was early April and just a week ago, they'd had a lovely burst of warm weather. The few remaining patches of snow had melted, the ground had turned soft and spongy, and one could smell the earth and its hidden growth again. Then the cold had returned, sudden and fierce - almost as if he had brought the bad weather with him.

"Starkweather - isn't that the perfect name for such a forbidding man?" Florence, the most irreverent and rebellious of Elizabeth's students at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, had said. "And the way he talks -" Florence mimicked the Reverend Starkweather's sonorous tones. "I pity those poor natives having to listen to him tell them what wicked heathens they are. And those jowls - he reminds me of a bulldog. Can't you just see him down on all fours in front of the seminary, ready to growl at any unlucky young man who happens to call?"

Elizabeth had laughed with Florence. Then, it had been easy to make fun of the Reverend Starkweather. Now, it wasn't - not when the reason for his visit was so obvious, nor his interest in her so evident.

Everyone at the seminary knew the Reverend Starkweather was looking for another wife. He needed assistance with his missionary labors in India, and having found a suitable helpmate among the Mount Holyoke faculty before, it was natural that he return to the same hunting ground after his first wife's death.

Ever since his arrival several days ago, he had singled out Elizabeth for particular notice. At meals and at missionary meetings when he spoke about his work, his eyes often sought hers. Just this afternoon, he had surprised her by coming into the room while she was conducting her section meeting. He seated himself in the back, nodding approvingly every time she rebuked an offending student. After the bell rang and the girls left, he congratulated her on how she maintained discipline. "Girls at that age can be most trying, not unlike some of the natives my late wife had to deal with. But like you, she knew how to keep them in their place."

Elizabeth had sensed then that he meant to propose - perhaps this very night. If he did, how would she respond? Once, her acceptance would have been a foregone conclusion. Teach, then marry: that was what was expected of her. When her father was alive, she hadn't thought much about marriage. It would happen sometime in the distant future, and she'd trusted Providence to place in her way a husband of great intelligence and personal charm - in short, a man much like her father. But here at Mount Holyoke, she met only ministers and missionaries, and failing an offer from one of them, she faced spinsterhood, empty and ignominious.

But then Florence had helped her see another possibility. The girl's talk about making a name for herself as an actress or public lecturer made Elizabeth wonder if there wasn't something she burned to accomplish herself. At first, she couldn't think of anything, but as she recalled her helplessness and anger when her father died, she discovered a hidden yearning. If only she had possessed the medical knowledge that could have saved him.

"By all means, become a doctor!" Florence cried when Elizabeth confided her ambition. "Other women have done it." Florence showed her an advertisement in The Liberator, placed by a woman who described herself as a female physician "attending to all diseases incident to the human frame except those arising from immorality."

Elizabeth protested that it was all very well for William Lloyd Garrison and his motley crew of reformers to support a female physician, but she feared that a long, lonely struggle lay ahead of her. And even if she did manage to obtain a medical degree, she worried that no respectable person would seek her services.

"Professor Hitchcock doesn't think it wrong for girls to learn about human physiology," Florence countered. "Why not speak to him about becoming a doctor?"

But so far Elizabeth had refrained from approaching the professor. She was afraid it was folly to even consider pursuing studies that few other women had attempted, and that were likely to bring her censure and ridicule. On the other hand, if she married the Reverend Starkweather and went with him to India - that hot, dark, inhospitable continent - she would earn the approbation of many, including Miss Mary Lyon, the seminary's founder and head. Elizabeth knew that Miss Lyon held the Reverend Starkweather in high regard. He was a graduate of Yale College, spoke several languages, and was well known for his missionary labors. To receive an offer of marriage from such a man was a great honor. Did she dare refuse it to follow the will-o'-the-wisp of a career in medicine?

The knock that Elizabeth had been expecting came. Hugging herself against the chill, she went to the door.

The Reverend Starkweather stood with his back to Elizabeth in the large double parlor, apparently lost in contemplation of the pot-bellied stove. He turned and she saw his face as a collection of shiny surfaces dominated by the wide, gleaming convexity of his forehead, from which his hair receded in dark, oil-slicked waves. How sleek and polished he looked. Even his eyebrows were stiff and glistening. Perhaps he waxed them. But how to explain the perfect sheen of that dome-like forehead? She imagined native servants buffing away until they could see reflections of their own dusky features.

"Ah, Miss Flynt." The shiny surfaces rearranged themselves slightly as he spoke. "I hope I am not interfering with your preparations for tomorrow's exercises."

"Not at all."

He cleared his throat before continuing. "In some it might seem the wildest presumption to speak to you as I am about to. But the Lord has granted me the power to look deeply into the human heart. And what I have seen in your case has served to confirm certain impressions formed on first becoming acquainted with you. Shall I tell you what I have seen?" Without giving her a chance to reply, he said, "I have seen a noble soul aquiver to accomplish some high purpose, yet uncertain of its true vocation. For some years now, you have discharged your responsibilities to the girls of this seminary worthily and well. But this chapter in your book of life will soon close. You will begin a new chapter more exalted than the last. As my wife, you are about to enter a great and glorious service in the vineyards of the Lord."

The Reverend Starkweather's face glowed with the same rapt look Miss Lyon's face wore when she spoke to the students and teachers about salvation. But the words that followed offered no vision of paradise.

"You will die in India!" he exclaimed. "I know it and see it as clearly as I see you here before me."

Elizabeth recoiled with shock. The Reverend Starkweather's face gave way to a vision of a headstone shimmering in the heat of that far-off place, keeping company with an older slab belonging to the first Mrs. Starkweather. She remembered the other woman's letters, read faithfully at their weekly missionary meetings. Those letters described the new bride's struggles with seasickness, homesickness, and the mastery of a foreign tongue. They spoke cheerfully of her efforts to find a bit of Boston in Bombay, but also of her despair at the harshness of the climate and the people themselves. At the same time, the letters revealed that the former seminary teacher had done her duty. She had taught in the mission school, visited high-caste Indian women in the seclusion of the zenanas, and given birth to a child under conditions her readers shuddered to imagine.

"What happened to her- your first wife, I mean?" Elizabeth asked.

The Reverend Starkweather looked surprised. "You do not know? Very well then, I am happy to tell you because my wife's last illness and death may serve as an inspiration to all Christian women. The infection must have come as a result of childbirth, because less than two weeks after we buried little Mary, the awful symptoms manifested themselves. First, a stiffness in the jaw, then, a strange restlessness and nervous irritability, which increased to the point where my wife could not bear noise of any sort and often complained of being cold, though the hot weather was upon us. When she began to experience difficulty in swallowing, I became truly alarmed and insisted she take to her bed and a doctor be called.

"But to no avail. Poor Eudocia now suffered from painful convulsions brought on by the slightest disturbance - noise, a draft, a jarring of the bed. During one such convulsion, her face assumed a singular expression. Creases appeared in her forehead, her brows arched, and her mouth locked in an unnatural smile."

Elizabeth felt her own facial muscles tensing.

"Yet her mind remained clear," he said. "When, fearing the end was near, I asked, 'Is Jesus still precious?' she nodded in reply, as she was no longer able to speak. An hour or so later, one last terrible seizure shook her frame and she departed this life - happy, I am convinced, that God should have used her, however briefly, as an instrument of His glory."

Elizabeth felt as if she were choking. She opened her mouth to gasp for air and an odd, throaty sound came out. A few seconds later, the noise repeated itself. To her great embarrassment, she realized she had the hiccups. She covered her mouth, hoping to stifle the sound, but it was no use.

The Reverend Starkweather stared at her in amazement. Hiccups, she knew, were hardly the response he expected, and his annoyance was evident in his voice. "If you hold your breath long enough, the spasms should cease."

Elizabeth held her breath until she felt her lungs would burst. But her only reward was another hiccup, louder than the ones before.

"Try again," the Reverend Starkweather commanded in a tone he might have used to direct a wayward native, or possibly his late wife.

Elizabeth made a final effort, sucking in the air and holding it within puffed cheeks until the bubble burst and she let go. She wasn't just hiccupping now, but shaking all over with wild, unfamiliar laughter.

Through the blur of her tears, she saw the horror in the Reverend Starkweather's face, heard the panic in his voice. "You must control yourself, Miss Flynt!"

She tried to steady herself by wrapping her arms around her waist, but she couldn't stop the spasms or the laughter - not even when he seized her by the shoulders and shook her. His head bobbed so close that she could smell the brilliantine on his hair. He released her with a look of anger and disgust. She had one last glimpse of his face, now pale and dull like old wax. Then he turned his black, clerical back on her and the eclipse was total.

Everyone at the seminary wondered at the Reverend Starkweather's abrupt departure the next day, wondered why this soldier of the Lord who had swept into their midst like a conquering lion should now flee like a frightened sheep. But Elizabeth was able to quell the gossip so that all her students ever knew was that Miss Flynt had become overwrought and been calmed by Miss Lyon and a cup of chamomile tea.

This short story was published in New England Writers Network Magazine (NEWN), Autumn 2004. You can read my interview in NEWN here.