The Cigarette's Smoke and the Shadow of a Mother's Heart

The smoke from the cigarette spilled out like a sigh, drifting across the room in a misty haze.

Carlyle could finally understand the depths of his mother's heart, the one that had been forced to endure the caresses of a man she never truly loved—a foreigner with no shared affection or understanding—while loving another woman. He had used Mabelle as a pawn, just as his own father had done. A dark nausea twisted within him.

“Salaud.” The curse hung unspoken, its target unclear—whether it was his father or himself.

Carlyle crushed the cigarette into the ashtray and stepped to the window, gazing out over the salon beyond. His eyes lingered on the door to Mabelle’s cabin.

“H…”

He wondered if he was seeing his mother in Mabelle, or his father in himself. Or both.

A twisted smile curled at the corner of his mouth.

The glittering sight of one of La Rotrou’s first-class cabins flashed vividly to mind. There had been no private terraces in those days.

Carlyle turned his gaze back to the dark sea. If such a terrace had existed then, would it have been a tragedy or a blessing?

He sometimes regretted the times he had followed his mother like a watchful shadow, fearing she would jump into the sea.

Etel Gertrude Lancaster had married Etienne Philippe de Châtillon-Villiers, Count, when she was only eighteen, at the height of her debutante season.

It had been the will of her ambitious father, Douglas Lancaster.

Douglas had been born in Savannah, Georgia, to a dock laborer of impoverished white-trash blood and a French-Creole plantation owner’s laundress. Southerners called them “poor white trash.”

From the age of five, Douglas trailed after his father, working odd jobs along the docks and growing up fast. He had a sharp mind and a talent for figures; he learned anything quickly.

At fifteen he took a job as a warehouse assistant at a cotton commission house. His deep blue eyes, sharp nose, tall frame of six feet, and sturdy build forged from dock labor had earned him the favor of the mill owner, who appointed him his trusted aide.

His handsome looks became weapons; he seduced the owner’s daughter, Edna, and won marriage to her when she became pregnant. Thus his dream of rising in society had come true.

Yet the truth that the self-made man and father-in-law, whom everyone in Savannah’s high society had once looked down upon as a “nouveau riche,” now faced constant scorn was a shock.

Just before the outbreak of the Civil War, his father-in-law died. At last Douglas inherited the company and took the chair he had coveted for so long.

During the war he broke the blockade, exporting cotton or smuggling necessities to amass enormous wealth. Before long Douglas Lancaster became the richest man in war-ravaged Savannah.

And it was exactly that fact that brought him further ostracism.

Returning from a business trip to New York, he decided to leave Savannah’s suffocating social strictures behind and move to the city where money was king—the land of the Yankees.

Leading his entire family to New York, Douglas founded Lancaster Shipping and Trade. The company grew swiftly, and soon he stood shoulder to shoulder with New York’s millionaires.

Yet the social snobbery of New York’s elite was no less formidable.

“Even though they crawl in and out the back door of their stinking Yankee houses outside Savannah Square.”

Whenever he was ignored, Douglas repeated the words like a mantra. He pretended not to notice that he himself had never properly stepped foot inside a Savannah high-society mansion.

Then he witnessed nouveau riches like himself marrying into European nobility and gaining entry into upper society.

It was merely a social entrance ticket bought with money.

Douglas, citing linguistic and cultural similarities, chose French nobility over the English peers most of them preferred. The choice was a perfect reflection of his lifelong longing for the elegant, refined culture of Savannah’s Creole plantation owners.

With unstoppable momentum he arranged his only daughter’s marriage.

Meanwhile, at that time the thirty-two-year-old Count Etienne Philippe de Châtillon-Villiers was on the brink of bankruptcy.

His ancestor’s lavish management of the winery and failed investments had reduced the family estates inherited through generations to the point of being forced to sell.

Yet Etienne had a lover who had acted in the role of true wife since his youth—the young maid of the estate where they had grown up together.

Etienne had no choice. He could not keep both the estate and the title, love and pride.

After much deliberation he accepted an American match.

Douglas gladly paid a huge dowry as payment for marrying his daughter to a French noble. And thus, as the father of the Countess, he finally entered New York high society.

It was both the consequence of a lifetime of inferiority and the moment his lifelong dream was fulfilled.

Yet for the innocent, prideful only daughter raised in lavish comfort by money, the curtain on misfortune had risen.

Etel often pulled Carlyle close and confided.

“I hated marrying your father, old enough to be my father, who couldn’t even talk to me. I jumped off the ship heading to Le Havre so many times. But every time I failed. I curse the people who saved me then. If only they had left me alone, I wouldn’t be in this state now.”

Etel would grow sad, blame her father, then dissolve into tears from the emotion that rose within her.

Carlyle was at a loss each time, overwhelmed by a strange sense of guilt.

Every February the Châtillon-Villiers family spent the winter in a villa in the cliffside village of Èze on the Côte d’Azur in southern France.

When spring came they joined the proper Paris social season. Then in June they moved to the resort at Deauville in Normandy and stayed there until August.

“Carlyle, please tell Father to come here more. Huh? You know I never listen. I don’t want to go to the estate. It’s… truly awful.”

Father always wanted to return to the estate before autumn, and Mother fought tooth and nail to avoid it.

“Your father wants to go back to that woman. The maid, who took over the separate wing and laughs at everything, at the place where that woman is.”

At the time Carlyle had not fully understood the meaning of the words. He only vaguely sensed that Mother disliked the estate because of the one maid his father was particularly close to.

But he loved the estate.

From the tower of Château de Villières on the hill of Châtillon-sur-Marne, the vineyards along the Marne River and the small village below could be seen spread out in cool splendor.

He rode horses across the vast fields, hid and sought in the estate with the servants.

Carlyle had no reason to dislike the place.

As he grew older he realized the servants’ attitude toward his mother was strange. They openly mocked her French accent and whispered among themselves that she was “an American woman” whenever they were alone. Yet he did not know that his father’s tacit approval encouraged their insolent behavior.

When the conflict between Etel and Etienne grew long, Douglas Lancaster finally crossed to France and mediated. Each time he came he pressed his son-in-law for large sums of money, begging him to take good care of his only daughter.

Using that money Etienne repaired the estate, built a new villa in Èze, and bought a luxurious apartment in Paris for his lover.

Carlyle had his maternal grandfather.

Douglas loved ostentatious clothing and spoke French as roughly as the dockworkers of Marseille.

Yet every time he visited France he would return with his hands full of rare toys for his grandson. And when addressing the boy he would call him “Monsieur le Baron” with utmost respect. His proud, affectionate eyes gazing at him were filled with a smile that seemed to say he had the whole world.

Etienne possessed not only the primary title of Count Châtillon-Villiers but also the secondary title of Baron that had come down through the family line.

One of the conditions Douglas had negotiated in exchange for the dowry was that the secondary title would be granted to the eldest son Etel bore.

Though it was merely nominal, it was no different from Douglas buying a title with money and gifting it to his grandson.