The sibilant buzz of motor trucks, returning to the distant dairies beyond the second mountain, died eastward. Lawn mowers clicked rhythmically, school tardy bells rang, chatting nursemaids chose the stone benches under the deepest shade of the parked roadways. Jays flickered noisily through the ringed oaks still rising from the sparse areas of fenced outcrop.
A gray limousine disturbed the sunny height with its alien whirr—turning from Logan Avenue to reach the great flowery green on the crest left of the gap. Two men climbed out, stretching cramped limbs; the first with firm carefulness, testing each footing before he rested upon it, the second with deferential assistance.
The elder man walked over to a curved bench facing the spread of the city below. From old habit he pulled out a cigar, twisted the silver wrapper into a ball, and spun it deftly into smooth grass covering a healed scar caused by the old mining. His teeth crunched into the well-packed leaves; his tongue rolled the unlit Havana around the rim of his mouth.
The other stopped a step or two behind. "It's rough on you, Paul.... You're all alone in the new Hillcrest Cottage now, aren't you?"
"Yes, Governor...."
He pondered soberly, and spoke again with a deprecating cough. "Your wife was an exceptional woman."
"Death makes no exceptions," the other mused aloud; there was small feeling within him that this was anything else than a philosophic excuse for weakness in others. After a few minutes silence, he took up the thread again. "You know, Kane, Mary hadn't been strong for some years. Life on the mountain was hard on a woman. She took the strike very much to heart; her house was burnt then.... That was why I declined the Senatorship ... then." His squinting gaze took in the panorama before and to the rear. "It's changed.... Not a mine within ten miles now; nothing nearer than those wonderful new openings this side of Coalstock.... Houses, houses, houses...." His eyes looked from the ample homes along the crest estate, to the cheap frame houses crowding the foot of the hill, on the side toward Adamsville; and then to the negro settlement of Lilydale behind, which a pushing real estate firm had continued to the very border of the Hillcrest lands.
"It's a pity the land fringing yours hadn't your development. When the riff-raff once move into a neighborhood——"
"I know, I know. The mountain's held out, so far."
Paul achieved a moment's isolation by walking to the edge of the summit. The children would return soon to their scattered homes; he was the last Judson living in Adamsville.... He—and the mountain. He had risen to the crest of his ambition—he asked no more.