Masked by Moonlight (14 page)

G
eorgia nearly gasped. She’d taken the greatest of care not to reveal his identity. “How did you…?” She could not even finish the sentence.

“My dear girl, this is a convent, not a deserted island. We still do get asked to events and we still do meet people. Especially visiting dignitaries. And I must say Reverend Bauers has been rather vocal about Covington’s dramatic scrape over at Grace House. And then there is Stuart. He likes to make sure everyone knows he knows everyone important.” One hand flew to her chest. “Really. I do wonder how you put up with that brother of yours.”

It wasn’t as if Georgia hadn’t heard that sentiment expressed many times before. She heard that remark, or something like it, frequently. But she usually fended it off with a comment about how Stuart had a big heart, or how he loved her dearly even if he did have an odd way of showing it, or how it took a big spirit to run a big paper. Today, though, she found such responses hollow and false. “I suppose I wonder myself,” she said, surprised at her own open admission.

“You’re not him, you know. You’re not alike at all. You’re the furthest thing from each other that could be.”

It was as if Charlotte had given voice to a fear Georgia had never allowed herself to recognize. A thought she’d never articulated, never even dared to name. She was afraid that people thought her like Stuart. That people mistook her tolerance for approval. That people never saw her behind the glare of Stuart’s high-energy personality. Seemingly out of nowhere, Georgia felt a lump rise in her throat. She swallowed hard, thinking it a very foolish thing indeed to grow teary in a school hallway.

Charlotte, however, was far too keen a soul not to notice the effect her words had on her companion. She grasped Georgia’s arm and squeezed it affectionately. “That’s part of it, isn’t it, dear? To spend your life alongside someone like Stuart. You fear yourself invisible.”

Invisible.
It was as if Charlotte had chosen the very word Georgia couldn’t bring herself to use. Is this what nuns did? Bring people to the point where words evaded them, and they could only nod?

“My dear Georgia, none of us is invisible to God. He sees all that we do. All that we bear. All we yearn for. Surely you know that in your heart?”

“I do,” Georgia replied, her voice a bit shaky. “But…”

“But knowing something and feeling it are two different things, aren’t they?”

Georgia nodded.

“Mr. Covington. Does he make you feel invisible?”

“Oh, no, not at all,” Georgia replied, with more enthusiasm that was perhaps wise. “Quite the contrary.”

“There is much to be said for that.” Together they walked through a sea of girls toward the convent garden.

“There is also much to be said for the huge distance between London and San Francisco,” Georgia murmured. “And for a heart of faith and a heart without faith.”

Charlotte patted her hand. “Ah, now, that’s a real issue. Oceans can be crossed. Households can be moved. A man’s faith is not so easy a challenge. I daresay you are right to hesitate.” She opened the garden gate. “Does he know of your faith?”

“I’m sure he does. We’ve spoken of it directly.”

“Well, that’s certainly promising. What did you discuss?”

Georgia’s heart gave an unsettling flip as she remembered the scene in the park. “He asked me to read him my favorite scripture. I’m quite sure it affected him to hear it. I mean, I suppose I’m sure. You can never be sure about something like that, can you?”

“Nonsense,” countered Charlotte. “I believe you can be.”

“Still, admiration of faith, and faith of one’s own, are very different.” Georgia fingered a broad green leaf on a plant to her left.

“An excellent point. How would you describe Mr. Covington’s faith?”

Georgia thought about it for a moment. Matthew had tried not to be affected by the scripture she had read, but she knew it had had an impact upon him. It was in his eyes even if he hadn’t said so. And somehow, without their even discussing it, she knew he was struggling with whether to delve into the Bible Reverend Bauers had given him. Was God, in fact, “on his heels,” as the reverend was so fond of saying? Was that why God had brought Matthew into her life? The thought seemed far-fetched, yet appealing. She felt a grin sneak across her face. “Ready to pounce?”

Charlotte sat down. “God has certainly been pouncing on unlikely men since the time of Moses.” She spread her hands wide. “Why not your Mr. Covington?”

Matthew looked up from cleaning his sword when the clock chimed eleven. After a dreary dinner at the Oakmans’, during which the couple seemed intent on securing themselves in his good graces by way of endless compliments, he’d retired to his room. As the son of a powerful businessman, he’d been the recipient of such attention enough times to recognize it. Still, he never could stomach it the way his father and brother could. They saw it as the necessary lubrication of the gears of commerce. To him it rang insincere.

It made him think of Georgia. How opposite they were. Here he was, under the glare of so much unwanted attention. Eyed by dozens of people who were watching to make sure he did his duty. She, on the other hand, went about duties far beyond and in many ways beneath her station without the slightest bit of recognition or notice. How could she endure the disparity, when it chafed at him so?

Matthew’s gaze fell on the small Bible sitting at his desk. Did her faith gave her that steadiness he admired?

He was almost embarrassed to be considering the question, although he didn’t know why.
Because you have no faith,
he told himself.
And you won’t pretend you do. At least you respect God enough not to employ Him as lubricant to the gears of life.
One had to have faith to benefit from it.

He’d heard of people “coming to faith.” There’d been a cousin several years back, an idealistic young man who’d left a promising post with a fine firm to go off and teach natives somewhere. So obviously, one could acquire faith, for the cousin in question had been quite the rake before God got ahold of him.

But how did one acquire it? Did you hunt it down? Or did it come upon you unbidden, like an illness?

Or love.

Was he in love with Georgia Waterhouse? Matthew mused. What a mess that would be. He was taken with her. Extremely. Dangerously. But he was not ready to use a powerful word like love. He’d try not to be, if one had a choice about such things.

Georgia’s faith was an inseparable part of her. One could not admire the woman without admiring her faith. And he did admire it, greatly. He just didn’t think he could go beyond admiration to the sharing of that faith. He didn’t think it worked that way.

Still, Matthew owed it to Georgia not to make a pretense of the services on Friday. He would, he decided as he put the sword back into its case, make an honest attempt at participation. Out of respect for her and all the people who had been so kind to him at Grace House. And there was really only one way he could think of to do that.

He ignored the trepidation that assailed him when he walked over to the desk and picked up the Bible. He’d open it. For her. To respect her.

Since it was the fate of Jesus they would be honoring, Matthew calculated that the life of Jesus would be the story to read. Those were laid out in the four Gospels—he remembered that much from the half-dozen Sunday school lessons he’d endured. They were somewhere toward the back. He was relatively certain he’d recognize the four names when he came to them.

He laughed when he came across the first one: Matthew.

Well, if one had to pick a place to start…

S
udden chords from the small chapel piano brought Matthew’s thoughts back to the service. It was a simple, honest service. Reverend Bauers read scripture passages telling the story of Jesus’s trial, crucifixion and death, interspersed by half a dozen somber hymns. Had Matthew attended such a service back in England, he would have found it dour and depressing.

His own response today surprised him. The seriousness did not seem out of place anymore, for he knew the story. In fierce detail. And now those details came upon him with such intensity that they seemed to puncture him. He’d never considered the possibility of the world—the universe itself—hanging on the outcome of a single day. It wouldn’t fit into the confines of human logic.

This man, this “savior,” had gone to a grisly death reserved for the lowest criminals.

And he went
by choice.
That was the part that festered in Matthew’s spirit. If this Jesus really had all that power, was who He claimed to be, then why this outcome? Why not go straight to the victory everyone celebrated on Easter Sunday? It made no sense. Matthew had been angry the first time he’d read the gospel last night, thinking it all unjust torture. A waste of a good man. Why would a God as powerful as that allow such a thing to become the pivotal moment in human history?

Agitated, Matthew had stayed up later to read it all a second time. He was sure he’d somehow missed a crucial element, some key point that would let the story make sense.

But the clear choice of it, the dozens of times a mighty God could have stopped it all, had not changed. There was no other conclusion: it was Jesus’s conscious choice to endure this gruesome thing. This hideous mistake that was really no mistake at all, but planned from the dawn of time.

Why?
Matthew’s whole being seemed to resonate with the word as the readings followed the plot to destruction.

Halfway through the service, Reverend Bauers read the passage where Jesus, in the throes of pain and suffering, gave his mother to another disciple. Matthew heard a small whimper next to him and realized Georgia was crying. His heart ached for her. For her devotion, for her acceptance, when it seemed all he could do was resist.

Then—quickly or gradually, he couldn’t really tell—the resistance grew too much to bear. His heart went legions beyond aching for her and her devotion, and began aching for everything. It was as if all the details crushed down upon him, breaking his heart wide-open, in a way he didn’t recognize but somehow always knew existed. And he couldn’t bear to resist anymore. Because he realized it wasn’t the injustice he was resisting, it was the unfathomable love behind it.

This story was never about power or justice or any of the things he’d thought before. This was a love story.

The readings went on, pushing toward the terrible end, where the final hymn hung in the air like a funeral dirge and tears shone on Georgia’s cheeks. For the first time, Matthew glimpsed what it was that she saw. And he felt his heart crush. Yet it wasn’t an obliteration, it was a transformation. As if his heart were crushed to burst open again. Burst open to reveal an affection. Matthew thought about what he felt for her—sorry excuse for a man that he was—and realized that it must have been only a shred of what this God would have to have felt for mankind—for
him
—to endure such a gruesome path.

There was a large hill on Matthew’s property when he was a boy. Legs churning, he would run toward the top until his lungs burned, toward the place where he could see the valley on the other side. He was always running so fast, and the summit was so broad, that he never quite knew when he’d hit the top. It didn’t really have a top. It was more like a shift, a realization that his churning legs were now going down, and he could see the valley. The sensation that he’d shifted sides without truly knowing when it happened.

It was like that.

He believed.

It wasn’t a single moment or a great, peaking precipice, but a slow shift that altered his view. The churning of all those details, all the people newly come into his life, all the feelings surging up inside of him, had propelled him toward a summit he had almost imperceptibly reached.

And now he believed.

It was both awesome and quiet at the same time. Like a rope drawn so tight it finally snapped, but then again, not at all like that. Like a gear finally slipping into place, but not at all like that, either. As if everything made sense, but now had been turned inside out.

He realized, as the events of the past few weeks strung themselves together in his mind, that God had been propelling him up the mountain even before Matthew knew it. That the path had been there all along. Reverend Bauers, Georgia, even the boy who’d cut him—these people were placed in his life, at this time, for a reason. He was the man he was, faults and strengths, for a purpose. Unique by design. Loved beyond his comprehension. Sent.

He believed.

He found himself having to tell his body to breathe in and out, for it no longer seemed to work right. Nothing had changed, and yet everything seemed in far sharper focus. He felt as if he should run and shout, but wondered if he could move at all. It may have been minutes until the end of the service, or it might have been hours; he seemed unable to tell. He stared at the edge of the pew in front of him without seeing it. How very odd to be caught by surprise by something that hadn’t sneaked up on him at all. God had, just as the reverend had said, gone “after him with both barrels blazing.”

And Matthew hadn’t even recognized Him until Georgia Waterhouse stared so hard at God that He came into view.

Now what?

At some point the service would come to an end and he’d need to walk out of this dear little chapel and return to the world he’d known. How would it change? Would it change at all? How would the Matthew Covington of faith be different from the Matthew Covington of before? Was it visible? It seemed both worthy of shouting from rooftops and excruciatingly private at the same time. He found himself, quite simply, at a complete loss.

The service did come to an end, and the congregation followed Reverend Bauers’s instructions to file out in respectful silence. The door to the church was closed with a declarative thud. Matthew felt slightly dizzy.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Georgia’s concerned glance. “Are you well?” she said, putting a gentle hand on his elbow. The tender touch felt as if it would knock him across a room. He wanted to take her hand and cling to it, but forced himself to tuck it into his elbow with any semblance of formality he could muster.

“May we walk?” he choked out, his voice unfamiliar.

She noticed his strange tone, and stared at him for a long moment before nodding. Somehow sensing his need for silence, she led him around the building into the mission’s garden. They ended up standing in the small courtyard, where he’d been cut what seemed so long ago.

He sat down on the wide rim of the fountain facing a small fruit tree just venturing to bud. Signs of newness—something he usually never noticed—seemed to surround him. Buds, sprouts, new leaves…
ugh:
He thought it all a bit conspicuous of the universe to get so metaphorical all at once. He was not fond of poetry. Was it appropriate to hope that faith did not lead one immediately to artistic pursuits?

The sheer ridiculousness of the thought forced a laugh out of him, but it sounded far more like a sputtering cough.

Something was very wrong with Matthew. His agitation had begun somewhere during the middle of the service, and it was nearly palpable by the end. He seemed unable to talk, and yet kept growling with some kind of furor. Had he been insulted by the dark drama of the service? Had Reverend Bauers forced him to attend somehow, and angered him? He looked as though he might launch into a tirade at any moment. When his face contorted and he choked, Georgia panicked. “Goodness,” she said, alarm in her voice. “Are you ill?”

He blinked at her, looking as if she’d spoken a foreign language he couldn’t understand. Was he having some sort of spell? If he fell over, she’d be quite unable to stop him from toppling into the fountain. She grabbed his hand, worried that he might start swaying at any moment.

The moment she reached toward him, he clasped her hand. Hard. “Matthew,” she said, as loudly as she dared, not sure he could even hear. “Gracious, what is wrong?”

He looked at her for a long moment. “I believe,” he said, his voice full of surprise and concern.

It didn’t make any sense.
I believe I’m going to be ill? I believe you’ve insulted me? I believe I’ll have ham for dinner? I—

“I believe,” he repeated, clutching her hand for emphasis. “I
believe.”

The entire world stopped and turned. Truly, it felt as if even the trees perked up and took notice. She widened her eyes. “Matthew?”

He shook his head, pulling one hand from hers to run his fingers agitatedly through his hair. “I believe.
It.
I read through that Bible three times last night and…I believe.”

He seemed so shocked, so completely taken by surprise, that she couldn’t think how to respond, except maybe to cry, which seemed inappropriate but rather unavoidable. Reverend Bauers always had the most wonderful things to say to someone who’d just come to faith, but every single word seemed to desert her. She felt a tear steal down her cheek, and prayed for the right words of response. Nothing came to her. She clasped his hand more tightly.

He looked up at her, bewildered. “What do I do now?”

The response came upon her immediately, and she knew where Reverend Bauers gained his insight at such moments. Surely, only God could grant such timely wisdom.

“It is Good Friday, my dear Mr. Covington. There is nothing to be done. The greatest work has just been done for us. We need only accept it.”