Free The Blessing by Nancy Mitford

Sigi got back into the Canari set, from which he had been expelled, had he but known it, on grounds of clericalism. His adherence to M. l’Abbé had been doing him no good among the maquisards .
    M. le Curé was unable to keep the extraordinary pronouncement of young Madame de Valhubert to himself; he told one or two gossips, and the news spread like wild-fire, causing the greatest possible sensation in the village. The Catholics, adherents of the M.R.P. and so on, were very much shocked, but the rest of the population was jubilant. The daughter of a Freemason was an unhoped-for addition to the Valhubert family. Nanny, whose resistance to M. l’Abbé stiffened every day, came to be regarded as the very champion of anti-clericalism. The position of Charles-Edouard remained anomalous, a certain mystery seemed to surround his opinions, and nobody knew exactly where he stood. On one hand there was the Freemason wife, on the other it was he and nobody else who had summoned M. l’Abbé to teach his child. Since he was popular, jolly, and a good landlord, since his war record was above reproach, and they knew, from his own voice on the radio, that he had been one of the very first to join General de Gaulle, he tended to be claimed as one of themselves by all sections of the community while they awaited further evidence from which to draw further conclusions.
    Charles-Edouard did manage to convince his grandmother that freemasonry in England was regarded by decent, and even royal, families as perfectly correct. It took some doing, but finally he succeeded.
    ‘Very well then,’ she said. ‘I believe you, my child. But as we are on disagreeable topics, why this marriage by a mayor? Why not a priest?’
    ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘You know?’
    ‘Yes, I know.’
    ‘The fact is I was not quite sure. I married this foreign woman after a very short courtship, I was off to the war, perhaps for years, she was engaged to somebody else when I first met her, and might have – I didn’t think so, but there was no proof – an unstable character. And she was a heathen. The English, you know, are nearly all heathens, like freemasonry, it is a perfectly respectable thing to be, over there. Should she have got tired of waiting and gone off with somebody else, I didn’t want to be debarred for ever, or at any rate for years, from a proper marriage. If she, or her father, had made the least objection to the civil marriage, if they had even mentioned it, I would have got a priest, but the subject was never raised. It was very odd. They regarded the whole thing as perfectly normal and natural. Sigismond has been baptized, by the way. I wrote and asked for that, and it was immediately done, just as if I had asked for him to be vaccinated.’
    ‘And now?’ said Madame de Valhubert.
    ‘Grace is still a heathen, but you can see for yourself that she is a soul worth saving. In due course we shall convert her; it will be time enough then to be married in church.’
    ‘Charles-Edouard, you have brought home a heathen concubine instead of a wife! You are living in mortal sin, my child.’
    ‘Dearest grandmother, you know me well enough to know that I am generally living in mortal sin. We must trust, for my soul, to the mercy of God. As regards Grace, all will turn out for the best, you will see.’
    Grace would have been intensely surprised if she could have overheard this conversation. They both spoke as if he had picked up the daughter of a cannibal king in darkest Africa, whereas she thought of herself as a perfectly ordinary Christian. Something of this occurred to Charles-Edouard.
    ‘Please, grandmother, if you speak with Grace about this, don’t say that she is only a concubine. She wouldn’t like it. Trust me – I’m sure everything will be all right, meanwhile you can look upon us as fiancés.’
    ‘Very well,’ said the old lady. ‘I won’t say a word on any religious subject. It is your responsibility, Charles-Edouard, and you know