Dr. Burney, at this period, had received no intimation of the hovering storm, which all around him had for some time feared they saw gathering. To spare him was the united desire of his family, while any probability, however chequered, remained, that no dire and absolute necessity would force the infliction of so fatal a shock.
The disposition of Dr. Burney had aided their wishes, through his native inattention to all evil that was not obtrusive; for evil, indeed, he as little sought as practised. Passive, therefore, on one side, and timid on the other, the month of October, 1799, had arrived, with little comment or discussion upon the precarious health of the precious absentee; for Hope till then was still, even to the most anxious of the apprehensive, predominant—Celestial Hope! more soothing even than transient! more welcome even than delusive! and higher in power of inspiring blissful sensations than can be cancelled even by the misery of disappointment! for while so little of earthly happiness is permanent, how nothingly would be our portion of earthly enjoyment, were the episodes of ideal delights, in the epic poem of human existence, circumscribed by experience, and bounded by reality?
But when, with regard to this affecting subject, an alarm once arose in the family, that, striking even at Hope, showed it fading fast away, and verging on becoming imperceptible; the same filial solicitude took necessarily another turn, from the dread of exposing the parental tenderness of the Doctor to a blow for which he should be utterly unprepared.
How dire then was the task which fell upon this Memorialist, superadded to terrors the most thrilling, and grief the most piercing, of communicating to Dr. Burney, this harrowing menace! of tearing from his eyes those kindly mists, which had obscured from their sight the perspective of danger; and breaking into all the flattering schemes of ultimately calling that darling child “to rock the cradle of declining age,” and sooth and cheer its last days of repose!
The disclosure, however, was now imperative; the moment was come that admitted not of another for delay. A long season of agitating doubt was terminating in an affrighting conviction, that all possibility for averting the fast advancing calamity, was change of air and scene for the drooping sufferer.
The tale, therefore, was unfolded; and all that the truest filial devotion could suggest for mitigating the misery of this tragic confession, was zealously put forward, by an energetic enumeration of the means which might still be essayed, to obviate the difficulties arising from the insurrectional state of Ireland; and the lateness of the season for making the now last attempt—a trial of her natal air—to rescue this treasure, yet a space! from the already opening grave.
The Doctor bore the dreadful intelligence with a taciturn sadness, a gloomy consternation, the most affecting; yet that shewed surprise to have little share in his grief. His heart, during the ardent passions of glowing early manhood, had been rived by a deprivation that had nearly assailed his reason; and ever since that baleful period, he had recoiled from the approach of excessive affliction with a horror of its power over his mind, that made him shut his ears, and close his eyes, on the menace of every sorrow, of which the anticipation would be unavailing.—Such this must have been to him; and from this, therefore, he had sedulously turned aside; though he had long, it is presumable, been latently annoyed by apprehensions to which he had refused examination or harbour: for prognostics there are, where our wills and our wishes are opposed to the probabilities of events, from which no conflicts can rescue our fears, combat as we may to chase them from our thoughts. Prognostics that cross our paths like ruthless spectres; that present phantasms of perils; and that, while shunned in one quarter, start up abruptly in another! that invade the avenues of our most secret ruminations; that flit before even our closed eyes; and pierce across the shattered brain, in forms, shapes, fancies, and scenes, that relentlessly represent to us the appalling view of all we struggle to disbelieve and to discard! To such ineludable prognostics must be attributed the mutely mournful acquiescence that mingled with the heavy mass of woe with which the Doctor listened to these deadly tidings.
Winter now was nearly at hand, and travelling seemed deeply dangerous, in her sickly state, for the enfeebled Susanna. Yet she herself, panting to receive again the blessing of her beloved father, concentrated every idea of recovery in her return. She declined, therefore, though with exquisite sensibility, the supplicating desire of this Editor to join and to nurse her at Belcotton, her own cottage; and persevered through every impediment in her efforts to reach the parental home.
The ceaseless endeavours to hasten her journey, and the afflicting circumstances that intervened to retard it, cast the Doctor into a state of inquietude and disturbance, that had little intermission. Every part of her fond family severally, and in every way that the most anxious tenderness could vary or devise, worked at propitiating her arrival; while her heart-dear friends, Mr. and Mrs. Locke, and their beautiful, inappreciable bridal daughter, Mrs. Angerstein, made never to be forgotten, never to be equalled exertions of friendship, to draw her first to Norbury Park—that seat of all loveliness, and of every virtue!—that there they might recruit her debilitated frame, and brace her shattered nerves, by their boundless and incomparable restorative resources, and an air balsamic as their own social sweetness, before she should venture so near to even the precincts of the Metropolis as Chelsea College.
In her answer to the urgent propositions and prayers for preference that now poured in upon her, from her father, her brothers, her sisters, and these angelic friends, soothing—though nearly too penetrating to her grateful spirit—she declined, but with the softest expressions of reluctance, beginning her return at the dwellings of either sisters or brothers: and to the endearing; solicitations of Mr. and Mrs. Locke, she replied, that one thing only in the whole world could enable her to resist their kind desire, namely, her dearest father’s wishes to receive her himself, in all her feebleness and shaken state; and to help her restoration by his own personal cares: “This,” she adds, “had been such a balm to her sufferings, that she felt as if to behold him again, to meet his commiserating eyes, and to be under his roof and in his arms, would make him give her a second life.”