Page 170 of Companions of Their Youth
He sawhimself.
Not her gender. Not her station. But her brokenness. The helplessness of knowing shehadsinned. That no argument would exonerate her. No act could erase what she had already done.
And yet Christ had stooped and written in the dust. Had silenced the crowd.
“He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone…”
Darcy stared down at his gloved hands.
Then—words that he knew by heart, but which struck him now like thunder.
“Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and sin no more.”
He sat frozen long after the final hymn.
It was Bingley’s voice that stirred him. “Darcy? Shall we go?”
“You go ahead,” he said softly. “I shall walk. Tell Elizabeth for me?”
Bingley gave him a curious look but nodded and followed Jane and her family out into the winter morning.
Darcy turned back inside.
He found Mr. Sanderson just outside the vestry, removing his robe with slow, deliberate hands.
“Mr. Sanderson,” Darcy said. “Might I speak with you? Privately.”
The old man looked up, eyes gentle behind thick spectacles. “Of course. Come with me.”
The parsonage was warm and modest, the hearth giving off a faint crackle, books stacked neatly on every surface. Mr. Sanderson gestured to a chair by the fire and took the one opposite him.
They sat in silence.
Darcy stared at the flames, struggling for words. How did one begin such a thing?
At last, the old man spoke. “I can see you are troubled, Mr. Darcy. I assure you, whatever you say here to me will be kept in the strictest confidence.”
The words opened something in him.
It came out in a rush—not with all the sordid detail, but the truth of it. His sins before Elizabeth. His double standards. His shame. His fear that his past might tarnish the vows he had not yet made. His desperate desire to beworthyof her.
When he finished, he felt exhausted. Emptied. He could not bring himself to look up.
Mr. Sanderson sat back and folded his hands. “Very impressive, Mr. Darcy.”
Darcy blinked. “Sir?”
“Not many would come to a clergyman with such humility,” he said. “Far easier to bury it. To carry it in silence. But you brought it into the light. That is where grace begins.”
Darcy swallowed hard. “What can I do? To be… forgiven?”
The old man reached for his Bible, his fingers finding the page without needing to check.
“Isaiah,” he said. “Chapter one, verse eighteen.”
He read aloud in the clear, ringing tones of one who knew the passage by heart:
“Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”
