The Hardin tribune-herald. [volume] (Hardin, Mont.) 1925-1973, 1937-12-03

fan. 1t was a remarkable dream in that
nothing whatever happened in it. He
simply saw the fan come together, all
Of its pieces, rise fan-shaped in the
air against some kind of grayiSh back
ground, and grow.
for it grew and grew and grew until
it seemed to fill every inch of space
in the world, and whole armies could
have passed between it's sticks. The
design of the ivory lacework came out
with terrible enormity and the whole
its smallest details actually enlarging.
It was still growing-against the flat
im~possibility of growing any more,
since there was no more Space-when
he woke up, shaking with terror. 1t had
the effect on him of the most gruesome
nightmare.
He held off for two or three days,
but at last he returned to the old house
at Marty and made another sketch. He
was at a loss to explain the fascination
of the fan, but there seemed to him
something that demanded an answer in
it. A fan was only a fan, and this one
had been broken into bits a hundred
and s~eventy-five years or so ago. Why,
then, did its mere appearance in a
growing-have such a disastrous effect
upon his nerves and imagination?
He would not have been so exercised
over the matter if he had had other
! things to occupy his time and mind,
but he happened to be alone in Paris
for six weeks, and he was past the age
for easy amusements; the shattered fan
across a pr%ovidential emptiness. He die
not have the same dream again, ex-
actly, but twice the fan figured vaguely
in his sleeping hallucinations-so
vaguely that he could not remember
exactly how when he woke up.
But each time, although the dream
was not to be recalled, the effects were
the same as before; he was shaking
with the most unreasonable terror. The
whole thing was so absurd that he could
have shaken it off with a laugh if he
had been at home, at work, engaged
in the ordinary routine of a very Or
binary life. Here, in enforced idleness
and deliberate solitude, it came to be
a preoccupation.
| He got a number of books IN the
| period of that fan. and began to read
ment or learning, but as busily as a
dog digging for a bone, a detective
burrowing for a clue.
The figures of the age began to exist
for him and move anonymously about
the corridors of his modern, comfort
dUlc llOGSl, GllC COlO, llduS11Cy, AlyPo-
critical Choiseul, the DUO de Richelieu.
red-heeled and scented, and the gruff
old Marechal de Noailles-the soft little
Able de Bernis, kind and fearful
Luynes forever washing his hands OF
the sins of the woodland centrally,
the very heart of Versailles, Madame
de Pompadour, to whom the fan had
for unknown reasons, after 1t a been
broken to bits.
One day when he had been walking
for a little longer than usual he came
back to his hotel quite tired and sat
bar. It was not the right hour for
drinking-it was too early, or too late,
for the hordes that frequented the place
but there wa a barman on duty to
give Norton a double whisky and soda.
The little room was only half lighted;
the barman down at the end was seated
on a stool, working a crossword puzzle:
the chairs and tables were undisturbed
by human beings.
There, in that half Light, the whisky
combined with fatigue to send Norton
into a half sleep. He says he was at
no time fully asleep, or SO he believes.
But that state. whatever it was, and
he saw the fan for the last time, saw
It whole and saw It broken, and-this
Is the wonder-neither feared nor for
got what he had seen, but remembered
and ne longer cared.
It rose before him exactly as it had
lone when ne had first dreamed Of It:
its glass case; then there was no glass
case there. and the fan rose Of Itself
on Its base and grew, spread, enlarged.
1t was arrested for one monstrously