Ships were lost during these dark voyages, and said to have had dark passengers inside that they themselves did not see. It was dark in that time. In the years of turmoil, the family of the late Mr. William Wilde kept as many as possible of their possessions in the house, so that it looked very much the same as it had before. The housekeeper, Mrs. Rutherford, went on with her labors as caretaker, although she could not but see how slowly and sadly Mr. William Wilde's money dwindled, and how the Wilde estates and the trust were wasted. The family grew smaller with each year. The eldest child, Eliza, was gone. And the youngest son had died of a fever at the age of two, before he could draw his first breath. And his mother, too, took a bad turn in the summer and was not well again for years. Only the two youngest children, Dorothea and Oscar, still lived in the house. Dorothea was a lively little girl. She had black hair and deep black eyes. She had her grandfather's black beard and full long-lipped mouth. And she had his wild laugh, and little ways of saying outrageous things, and once when she was scolded for them, she had said she was more of a Wilde than anybody there in the library. Then, as her brothers sometimes told it, "We thought Dorothea was dead, she did laugh so loud," although they loved her anyway. Dorothea was sometimes called "Dolores" or "Dolly," and once in a story her name was changed to "Dolly Wilde." Oscar Wilde was a beautiful child, too. And when his mother was better, he would go with her into the garden in the warm spring days to teach her a lesson of the flowers and to learn his lessons at the same time. He looked up at the tree of love above, and said, "The tree of love is blooming with red flowers." He would say, "All the world is sad and dreary." He was always telling her new and more wonderful things. One day when they were walking together he told her: "The lilies and the roses are jealous of the violet. But when the violet is gone, the lilies and roses are gone also." She told him to read the Bible. She had given up on him the most part. He had once burned one of her favorite books of poetry and had refused to ever apologize. So she asked him to read her from the Bible. He said he did not read it, and she said, "You do not read?" He said, "I do not," and she said, "Then you are no longer a Christian?" He said, "I am no longer a Christian." She said, "But why did you never read it?" and he answered her, "I have read it, but it seemed to me that the sacred books of my country, which I am proud to call mine, were the holiest of books, and therefore any others would be an insult to the holiness of God." The Wilde house was filled with the books that her father had sent her from the South. He loved books and had built his library, in the first years of his marriage, to show his love for the people of the land, his love for the culture and ways of the Bible. He wrote in his own private writings, "A man can discover more things about more things in a house than a man can discover in a book." He believed that the purpose of life, of the whole journey in time, was to find what can be most closely associated with the divine. He believed that this could be done in the flesh, through the mind and the senses, and in the souls of many. In her beautiful letters to her father, Dorothea wrote a bit about how she wanted to live. It was the year that the dark stories were at the head of all the newspapers and magazines. It was the year that the king and queen went to visit the city of Dublin and that the man with a green carnation came and stood by a window where they were all gathered, and waved his hand and then went away again. It was the year that Lady Geraldine came to live at Coole. Mrs. Wilde came up the steps into the house from the back garden. Her voice could be heard. "Ain't she coming down for lunch? We mustn't start without her. Mr. Wilde will be coming to call her soon." She went to the front door. "There she is, she is coming herself. I'll go down to meet her," she said. There was Dorothea in her old child's dress coming down the steps. Mrs. Wilde walked straight on out into the garden and waited for her. Dorothea stopped to gaze at the garden's beauty. She held her breath as she always did when she first came out into the garden, for the air was so full of the smells of the flowers. The redbrick house stood quiet and seemed so filled with silence. The only sounds were the song of the birds in the trees and the voice of the woman and the girl waiting together in the garden, now standing and now sitting and now walking on, as the moment of passing time came and went. Dorothea had heard about Lady Geraldine and how she had turned to live at Coole with the gardener who worked for the Wilde family. She had heard about her beauty, which had seemed to come from another world. She had not yet seen Lady Geraldine. She looked into the woods. She could see the leaves of the trees shaking in the soft breeze. And she had never seen her mother's favorite sister, who had gone away. There were only the two of them, and the housekeeper, Mrs. Rutherford. Lady Geraldine was a lovely woman who came into the garden looking around for Dorothea. She seemed a little bit nervous and afraid of her and yet at the same time a bit relieved, as she saw Dorothea. Dorothea rose from her feet as she looked into the other woman's dark eyes. "Oh my child!" she said, and her voice had a touch of something that was not in her words. Dorothea took her mother's arms, but she had never been a hugging child, and she did not hug back. The two women looked into each other's eyes. And Lady Geraldine said, "Oh my child." Now, she walked with her arm over Dorothea's shoulders and she walked with her hand holding her own, with the air of a woman giving comfort. From far away came the sound of a coach and horses' hooves clattering along the road and the sound of many people coming and going. Lady Geraldine came in. She came into the library and she sat in the chair by the fire. She was the first woman to ever sit in that chair. Dorothea sat at the table writing. "I am learning to love my country," she wrote. "I am learning to love her trees and her fields and her skies. I am learning to love everything in this country where I live." Lady Geraldine was now looking through the paintings of Robert Bateman that hung on the walls of the house. The door opened and Mr. Wilde came walking through. He had heard the sound of a carriage coming up the hill, and he waited for it to come to a stop. He wanted to be certain that he knew for certain that it was a woman coming with her bags and her things. The gardener came out of the house with her bags, and she came in smiling and followed by her two Scottish terrier dogs, who were named Fonzi and Willie, and by Lady Geraldine. All in the house had been waiting for her. And now Lady Geraldine was a little surprised by how tall Dorothea was becoming, for they were the same age, at a time when tallness was associated with youth and vitality. And they lived now with the great shadow of her father's death which filled the house with its silence and the emptiness of the rooms. It was almost a year that he was gone, and no one could say what might happen in the future, but that he was gone it could be said was a comfort and an assurance for a time. Now Dorothea stood by her window and looked out at the garden. She held a small bunch of flowers in her hand. The leaves were purple and the small pink flowers had green hearts. She turned her head and looked at her mother who stood at the far window looking over the garden and the woods that lay out behind the house. "I am living," Dorothea said. "I live now in Coole, at Coole with the gardener. I have become a gardener, too. I have discovered more things about more things than any man could discover in the whole world. And my father has come to be with me." There was a silence. But all through the house there was a slight breeze. "You may believe what I say," Dorothea said, "that I am living." She held her finger up to her lips, so they might remember to keep everything just between them, for what she had to tell was of such mystery and strangeness. "Just believe me. He is with me, in me, to help me live. He will always be with me. And I will