Amy and Alois had begun as soon as the frost was out of the ground. By June they had almost all the trees planted. The following spring, and the transformation was complete. Overlook Hill, as it had been for ages, was gone; in its place was a graceful height, clad in a thousand shades of green and capped by a glistening white bastionlike building half hid among trees that looked as if they had been there a century at least. Indeed, except the buildings, nothing seemed new, everything seemed to belong where it was, to have been there always. The sod, the tangle of creepers and underbrush on the cliff and in the ravines, the cliff and the ravines themselves, all looked like the product of nature's slow processes. The masonry, the roads, the drives—signs of age and of long use. One would have said that the Fosdicks were building on an old place, a house better suited to modern conditions than some structure, dating from Revolutionary days at least, which must have stood in those venerable surroundings and had been torn down to make room for the new.
"The buildings are going to look too new," said Alois. And he proceeded to have them more artfully weather-stained.
Narcisse had preached the superiority of small houses to Amy until she had convinced her. So, Overlook Lodge, while not so small as it looked, was still within the sane limits for a private house. And the interior arrangements—the distribution of large rooms and less, of sunny rooms, of windows, of stairways, of closets—were most ingenious. No space was wasted; no opportunity for good views from the windows or for agreeable lines, without or within, was neglected. Through and through it was a house to be lived in, a house whose comfort obtruded and whose luxury retired.
In the woodwork, in the finishing of walls and ceilings, in the furniture, Alois followed out the general scheme of the appearance of an old-established residence, a family homestead that had sent forth many generations. Before a stone had been blasted at Overlook, the furniture and the woven stuffs were designed and manufacturing. While the outer walls of the house were finishing, the rooms were beginning to look as if they had been lived in long. There was nothing new-looking anywhere except the plumbing; nothing old-looking, either. The air was that of things created full grown, things which have not had a shiny, awkward youth and could not have a musty, rickety, rotten old age.
There came a day when the last rubbish was cleared, when the last creeper was in leaf, the last flower in bloom, when the grass and the trees seemed green with their hundredth summer, when the settees and chairs and hammocks were on the verandas and porticos as if they had been there for many a year, when no odor of fresh paint or varnish or look of newness could be detected anywhere about the house—and the "work of art" was finished. Alois and Amy, in an automobile, went over every part of the grounds, examined them from without and from within; then they made a tour of the house, noting everything. Changes, improvements, could be made, would be made; but the work as a work was finished. They seated themselves on a veranda overlooking the valley, and listened to the rush of the torrent, descending through the ravines, in banks of moss and wild flowers, to spring from the edge of the cliff. Amy burst into tears.
"You're very tired, aren't you!" said Alois sympathetically. There were tears in his eyes.
"No, that isn't it," she answered, her face hidden—she knew she didn't look at all well when she was crying.
"I understand," said he. "There's something tragic about finishing anything. It's like bringing up a child, and having it marry and go away." He sighed. "Yes, we're done."
"I feel horribly lonely," she cried. "I've lost my occupation. It's the first great real sorrow of my life. I wish we hadn't been in such a hurry! We might have made it last a year or two longer."
"I wish we had!"