There is a general conspiracy among all things at Pau to rest and soothe the tired man. There are the bells. How can they affect the golf? you ask. See, then. We know of the fame in song of "The Bells of Lynn" and those of Aberdovey too; but it seems to me that the bells of Pau should have an equal celebrity. They are excellent. Alongside the hotel at which I stay at Pau a fine church steeple towers up, and there is in it a splendid belfry with skilful ringers to use it. Sometimes their performances wake us before our proper time in the morning, which is the first effect. Then on some days and nights the ringers practise a kind of bell music, which holds one spellbound. It begins slowly and quietly with a few hesitating notes in the bass. Soon there is an answering echo in the treble, and then it all gradually increases in time and volume until in three or four minutes a veritable torrent of stormy music is crashing out from the tower and flinging itself out to the Pyrenees. And then it is as if the crisis passes, the bell music dies away again, and at the end there is but the thin little tinkle of a treble bell sounding lonely in the night. There are other fine belfries in the town; but, more than that, there are little churches all along the hill that frames our course on its northern side, and these have good bells as well, and they all chime the hours and the quarters—and all at different times! When one set of chiming begins just as you reach the green, you know that listening for the others will so much distract you that three or four putts may be needed, while the other man, being very phlegmatic, is down in two for a win again. There is one of these churches with its bells which has cost me many holes; its chime for the quarters is exactly the first four notes of the good old tune, "Home to Our Mountains." It strikes once for the quarter, twice for the half, three times for the three-quarters, and four times for the full hour, and, with the other two quick notes of the line missing, it always seems incomplete, and always irritates. If I am just about to swing when these bells begin to chime I see a catastrophe before me.
If there were no Pyrenees there would be no golf at Pau; I doubt if there would be Pau. Those glorious hills, beyond which are the castles and gold of Spain, make an almost matchless view, and they are so strong, so insistent, that they seem to dominate us in every consideration. If you should tell me that mountains that are more than twenty miles away can have nothing to do with the golfer's life and game, I ask you to go to Pau and be surprised. Those far-away hills give us rest, and they calm us to those moods of reflection to which, as golfers, we are so well inclined. From the window of my favourite room at Pau, I look right out on to the majestic chain, and have the best view of it that is to be had. Below is the Boulevard des Pyrénées, more than a mile in length. Beyond there is a valley, and beyond that the Pyrenees rise up to one long wonderful white-topped line. Looked at in this way they seem so very near, and yet their nearest point is more than a dozen miles away, and there are peaks four thousand feet in height which seem within easy walking range, and yet are distant forty miles. From one end to the other we look out upon a length of some thirty miles of these peaks, and indeed the effect is most enchanting. This is the view that I get at its very best from my little window high above the boulevard, and it is the view that brings scores of thousands of pounds of English money to be spent in the winter and the spring at Pau. It is a view that never palls, for it is never the same. To our eyes those great Pyrenees are always changing—kaleidoscopic in variety of shapes and colours. There are mysteries of the light and atmosphere about them which make for perpetual curiosity and wonderment. In the morning when we rise our first thought is as to what the Pyrenees will look like to-day, and gazing out from our little window we see them all done up afresh in new colours and shapes by Nature. They change as the hours pass, and then one is curious to know what new surprise the sunset will have in store. Sometimes in the morning they stand out bold in black and white, just as if they were plain and simple Pyrenees. In the middle of the chain two great points of peaks rise up from all the rest, and they are in the straight line out from the lofty window where I sit. They are the Grand Pic and the Petit Pic du Midi d'Ossau, and they are the pet favourites of all of us who gaze out southwards to the range beyond which the Spaniards dwell. The greater peak curls over a little at the top towards the lesser one, that seems always to be snuggling up close to it, and they look to us always to be like a lover hill and his timid lady. Another morning all these mountains will be of a sapphire blue. Next day they may be rosy red. But the best effects are those of a phantom kind. Now and then those Pyrenees seem to have gone away to a hundred miles beyond, and we see them rather dimly, but still with their outlines well defined. They look like ghost mountains, and in imagination we can peer through them to a nothingness beyond. Yet more curious, there are mornings, fine and bright in Pau, with everything shining in the sunlight, when there are no Pyrenees at all! There is that little low range of hills in front, with the chalets and the chateaux all plainly to be seen, and the light seems as good as ever it was in southern France; but the Pyrenees, where have they gone? Not a trace of them is left, and we are lonely, disconsolate. It is as if a jealous Providence had wrapped them up in the night and carried them off to another land where their eternal solitude would not be hindered by the touring man and woman. But they come back again by night, and their gradual reappearance is a thing for happy contemplation. Yet for the greater glory and richness of colour the evening sunset effects are the best of all. Then from the corner at the right the setting sun shines along the hidden valley between the little hills and mountains beyond, and it is as if in that unseen place below, millions of fierce lights had been set burning and shining up the Pyrenees as rows of hidden electric bulbs are sometimes used to throw a soft, weird glow upon a ceiling and cause it to be reflected back again beneath. Then the Pyrenees are as an ethereal vision; their base is like a golden band and their tops like filmy gossamer, so that these seem to us to be not mountains of the world at all, but high hills of heaven itself. And away in the west the sun sets in a burning Indian red, and the thin crescent of a new moon, with an attendant star, rises in the firmament. It is this that I look upon from my own crow's nest at Pau when my tramping of the day is done.
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One day at Pau a voice was raised in our little party and it said, "Let us get up closer to those splendid Pyrenees"; but another said, "Where should we get our golf?" It was answered that there was golf everywhere, and there must be some right alongside those white-capped peaks. Argelès! We remembered. It was advertised and well recommended as a good course, "open all the year round," and laid in the most delightful situation, the Pyrenees going up from its very edge. The prospect sounded well. We decided at night that on the morrow we would proceed with our bags of clubs to Argelès, and the porter at our hotel gave full directions for getting there, which made it seem a very simple business. It appeared that it was about thirty miles from Pau to Lourdes, and with the journey two-thirds done we were to change trains there. But, short as the distance was, it was to take us two hours. Our train would start at twenty minutes to nine in the morning. The match of the day, with four golfers implicated, was accordingly made overnight, and anticipation of the joys of Argelès became keen. All this was well, but when three of us had slept and were mightily refreshed, certain hitches and accidents began to happen. The fourth party to our contract still slumbered heavily at a quarter-past eight, and being then reminded, by sundry taps, of the prevailing circumstances, he muttered indistinctly that he was not to be tempted from his situation by the opportunity of playing two rounds on any course in Paradise. So we left him snoring, piglike, there, and we were only three.
We got to Lourdes and descended from the train. Troubles arose forthwith. The station-master blandly observed, and as it seemed with a hardly hidden smile (how is it that non-golfers of all classes always do seem to be made happy upon the contemplation of a golfer being suddenly robbed of his game?), that there was no train from there to Argelès until the afternoon, the service which the hotel porter had in mind not beginning until three days later. By the same token the return train which we reckoned on was non-existent, and he expressed doubts about our sleeping that night at Pau if we persisted in what he could not help regarding as a very mad enterprise born of too much enthusiasm. We thanked him, and went out into the streets of Lourdes to see what could be done. Truly, we were only ten miles from Argelès, even if the road was through the mountains. And it was a fine day.
Suddenly, and as it seemed from nowhere, up came carriages from all parts of the compass, each drawn by a pair of horses, the coachmen all loudly soliciting the favour of driving us to Argelès, which they explained was fifteen miles away—a deliberate exaggeration. The first man to whip up to us asked for twenty francs for the single journey, and the others were amazed at his impudence. Another offered to take us for fifteen, and a third cabby came down at once to twelve. Then they all did so, and the market seemed to settle at that price, a great gathering of coachmen surrounding us and expatiating on the superior merits of their various horses and the comfort of their vehicles. It was a great spectacle, this golfers' carriage market at Lourdes! At last the first man to make an offer to us, suddenly, in a mood of desperation, came down to ten francs, and we closed with him, not so much because of the saving of an odd franc or two, but because his pair of bays certainly did seem to have more fast trotting in them than any of the others. It was such a glorious journey down the valley of Argelès as golfers seldom make, huge, rocky, snow-capped mountains rising up from either side of the winding road. Leaving Lourdes there were two high hills on the left, one surmounted with a single cross and the other with three crosses of "Calvary" standing out clearly against the sky. Then, later, from the bottom of the valley a stumpy hill suddenly rose up in the middle, an old keep of mediaeval times on the top of it, and after that the great peak of the Viscos, with the pass to Gavernie on one side of it and that to Cauterets on the other were presented. Soon afterwards we rattled down the little main street of Argelès, and lunched at the chief hotel. There was then a ten minutes' drive to the course, and our coachman—a local fellow, and not the one who drove us from Lourdes—stopped at various cottages on the way and shouted out inquiries as to whether Adolphe or Marie or Jeanne was at home. He was getting caddies for us, as he explained there would be none otherwise. Eventually from different places we picked up three—two little girls and a boy—who hung on to the back of the vehicle and proceeded with us to the appointed place. The course has great possibilities, but as yet they are thinly developed.