Prologue
Edinburgh, June 23rd 1910
It was Thomas’ turn today. He and his friends had decided to forgo the evening services in order to smuggle two crates of bottled ale into one of the communal rooms adjoining the Assembly Hall of the United Free Church of Scotland. It was here that the Student Volunteers sold their lemonade - thus making it the favourite place for the younger guests and delegates of the World Missionary Conference to sit and converse deep into the night.
Even a few of the younger female visitors frequented the place - and that’s where the bet came into play. In the first days of the conference, Thomas Wheeler had reconnected with a handful of his fellow students - most of them young Anglican priests by now. And somehow, after a pint or two of ale and mutual commiseration about the difficulty of finding a suitable wife as a priest, they had decided that each one of them had to kiss at least one of the prim and proper missionary girls during the course of the Conference.
So far, Thomas had avoided the task. Not that he was not interested. Actually, he knew exactly whom he would try his luck with. Had known the moment they had made the bet. But as an assistant to Bishop Charles Gore and representative of the Christian Social Union, so far he had been kept rather busy.
And he had been nervous, terribly so.
She had fascinated him since the first day of the conference. Sitting in the section of the German representatives she was a stark contrast to the over a thousand pale faces in the assembly hall - including his own. Her complexion was of a kind of golden brown he had never seen before. Her hairdo revealed the tightly coiled structure of her deep brown hair. He had tried not to wonder what it would feel like under his fingers - and failed miserable.
What fascinated him most though was that while he was bored out of his wits during most of the lectures about how to reach the world with the gospel in this generation - which was not really his goal in the first place - she was listening intently, focusing her gaze either on the speakers or on the small notebook in her lap that she was scrabbling in constantly. Probably this whole reaching the world business was actually her goal - and this intimidated him.
Tonight, his friends wouldn’t let him off the hook though.
So when the bells chiming indicated that the evening service had finished and people were streaming out of the assembly hall, he finished his ale in a gulp and positioned himself near the entrance of the communal room.
There she was, walking towards the lemonade stand with a group of young women chatting animatedly. Well, the other girls were chatting - she was keeping to the edge of the group, looking a little forlorn.
“Guten Morgen,” he said in an attempt to say something in German. He had learned a little during his studies, but his knowledge of the language was rudimentary at best.
She looked surprised to be approached, but pleased as well.
“You learned that in a book, didn’t you?” she replied in perfect Oxford English.
“Well… we did read some German theologians, but… I was never good at pronunciation.”
She chuckled, a warm and lovely sound, while her friends had continued towards the lemonade stand and seemed to have forgotten about her.
“And of course from reading theologians, you wouldn’t be taught such mundane differences as when one uses what greeting, would you?”
“No, not really.” He shrugged.
She tilted her head slightly to look up at him and then said in a voice that reminded him very much of his primary school teacher, “This time of the day, it would be Guten Abend, and if you wanted to be courteous, you’d add an gnädiges Fräulein.”
“That’s a mouthful.”
“Did you want to greet me courteously or not?”
“Alright.”
He tried. He really did, and Guten Abend was fairly easy to say without butchering, but that second part… She corrected him again and again, and by the third time they were laughing together in a way that felt so right, he did not know why he hadn’t had the courage to talk to her earlier.
Then a thought occurred to him. “Wait, doesn’t gnädig mean merciful?”
She smiled widely as she said, “You have read your theologians, haven’t you? Amongst others, yes. But in this context, you’d rather say gracious in English.”
“So… I’m to address you as a gracious miss?”
“I am, am I not?”
Suddenly, her gaze was insecure. As if she did not really believe it herself. As if a lot depended on his next answer.
But it was no question, not for him.
“Of course, gnädiges Fräulein.”
And she laughed again, heartily, because he certainly had butchered it all again.
“Well, you’re not having a lot of mercy on my language learning aspirations though,” he said in feigned exasperation.
And she answered, still laughing, “No, probably not.”
“Well, my gracious miss, may I invite you to a glass of lemonade then?”
She accepted his invitation and then they sat at a corner of one of the tables and talked. He learned that her name was Hanna Hoffmann, that she was born in Germany, had spent the last two years studying at the Mildmay Deaconess Institution and was now going to return to Berlin, where she would go to Bethel Mission School and prepare to be sent to Cameroon as a missionary sister.
He was tremendously curious to ask about her origins, but when he made a small initiative towards that, her face immediately went rigid, so he preferred not to press the topic and told her in turn about his work with Bishop Gore and the Christian Social Union.
Although Thomas did not share most of her convictions about how the world needed to learn about Jesus - he thought the world might be generally quite content with the beliefs they already held, he admired her sense of purpose and the way her face started to almost glow as she talked about her plans.
He would have liked to have such a sense of purpose as well. His work was important, yes, but somehow for him it had been more of a compromise - something to do as long as he didn’t quite feel ready to become a clergyman yet.
The longer they talked, the clearer it became that snatching a kiss from her would not be a very good idea. Actually, it would be a terrible idea. She was so very convinced of her calling to become a deaconess - serving God and society as an unmarried woman sworn to celibacy, that confusing those sentiments with a kiss felt like a sacrilege. And she would never forgive him for it.
On the other hand, the warm smile on her full lips enchanted him, her dark brown eyes glittered in the candlelight, and it became clearer and clearer that he desperately wanted to snatch that kiss from her. Not here, of course. He would spare her that kind of embarrassment. If his friends wanted to confirm if he had won his bet or not, they would have to find their own way of doing that.
And so, when they had finished their lemonade, he asked against better judgment, “May I walk you home, gracious miss Hoffmann?”
She looked around the room, frowning. He followed her gaze and saw that the girls she had come with had long gone home. She sighed, then shrugged and said, “Seems like I have no other option if I don’t want to wander the streets of Edinburgh alone at this time of night.”
Thomas offered her his arm, asking, “Am I such a nuisance?”
With a smile she graciously placed her hand on his forearm. “No, I don’t think so,” she said and his heart leapt a little.
They walked along the dimly lit streets that were mostly silent, but whenever someone passed them, Thomas felt distinctly uncomfortable, noticing the way they stared. Hanna did not seem to notice. Or maybe she did, and had long decided to ignore it. Was she always drawing stares in such a way? How must that feel? Had he stared at her in a way that made her uncomfortable?
“What is it?” she asked, when he had been silent for a while pondering these questions.
“Nothing… Don’t you… ever think you’ll be homesick when you get to the mission field?”
“I don’t know. To be honest, I don’t know if I’ve ever had a home other than the one we’re headed to. Don’t get me wrong… the people who took me in have been kind enough, but…”
“You would always stand out.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe in Cameroon it will be different. What do you think?”
“I’m woefully unequipped to have any idea. Probably there won’t be so many differences in … outward appearance, but you were still brought up in Europe and that might make it even more difficult - people thinking you are like them, but then you’re not really. You will probably have to go and just see how it is.”
“Yes…” She smiled. “Are you sure you’ll never go into mission? You have such a keen understanding of culture.”
“While Edinburgh is the farthest I’ve ever been away from home,” he replied with a self-deprecating smile, “No, if I’ll ever even become a clergyman, it will be in a rural English parsonage where the greatest adventure I face is keeping the parishioners entertained with my mediocre sermons.”
“You underestimate yourself, Mr. Wheeler,” she said smirking, “although I dare say your complexion would suffer under the hot African sun.”
“It suffers enough under the English sun, whenever it dares to come out, thank you very much.” He thought about how it sometimes took less than an hour of out of doors activity for his sensitive freckled skin to turn red like a crab.
Their light banter and easy conversation made him wish for a moment that he could screw it all and follow her to the end of the world - well, Cameroon, to be precise. But apart from the conviction that he would not do well with the hot climate and the fact that he would never master the same passion and eagerness to share his beliefs with the world, he also suspected that his beliefs diverted wildly from hers.
And so it was to cherish the given moment and accept that after tonight he’d never see her again. Which provoked the thought that maybe one small, unassuming kiss would not be such a mortal sin.
Her lodgings, provided by the Young Women’s Christian Association, were on the next street corner, when he knew he had to make a decision.
“I apologise in advance, gracious Miss Hoffmann, but I have a bet going on”, he said while he stopped in a shadowy part of the road.
She looked at him in adorable confusion, but when he leaned in, she did not draw back. And so he did gather the courage and leaned in even closer until their lips met - it would be only for a moment, he told himself.
Her eyes widened in surprise, but her lips responded with a passion and longing he had not anticipated. He put an arm around her waist, buried the other hand in her hair that was so much softer than he had expected, and drew her closer. She tasted of sweet lemonade and her scent enveloped him, making him forget everything around him.
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay in England?” he murmured into her ear, his cheek brushing hers.
The next moment, her whole body stiffened and she gave him the one appropriate response a young woman could give a man in that situation - a good and solid slap in the face. “You, Mr. Wheeler, are the devil tempting me,” she spat at him and ran towards the entrance of the YWCA Building.
The insult stung more than the imprint of her hand on his cheek.
He grinned the whole way home, although there was a certain melancholy in the fact that he wouldn't ever see her again.
Or so he thought...
