Now he creaked along with the fire-wood for the winter.
His employer had begun a large business in wood; that made Hausbaum's carting period come in the fall. And so his little wagon again groaned over the deserted road, uphill, downhill, without his meeting a human soul. No driver but he was to be seen; he was like the ghost of the old road. The autumn tempest lodged in the canyon of the Drau, rebounded from all sides and whirled up, bidding him pull his old felt hat, on which he had long since given up putting any flowers, far down on his forehead. The land shook in the roaring sweep of a wrath of Doomsday, and his aging bones shivered. It was ending, ending; and where the larks of spring had once whirred about him, there he was now surrounded by the tittering dances of the withered leaves.
There he often saw once more the old houses with the little windows behind which he had had his girls, more of them and prettier ones than any lad in the land. But they had all married out of the houses or moved away, or had stayed on the spot and become care-worn housekeepers and mothers, who did not care to recognize him. The windows stared blindly at him, and no longer knew him for whom they had once opened like little gates of paradise, in passionate nights of spring. They had grown dull and gloomy; God knew who was now squatting behind them. But when from under one of the windows, despite the late October days, there came the breath of asters and everlasting, and some fresh young girl-face gazed in surprise toward the bony bachelor, who looked over inquiringly as with accursed, forlorn eyes, then his old heart would double up like a fist within him and cause him great pain.
It was all over; like fireworks.
And then, then even his very last sweetheart, which he had regarded as inalienable, was snatched from him: the highroad.
The first enemy he had merely followed with horrified eyes: the stinking, dust-whirling rattle-box, which flung the old road behind it as a spendthrift flings the precious money. But they kept coming oftener, the loud-colored power vehicles; faster and faster they became, and harder and harder it was for the carter's old hands to control the madly rearing horses.
In former days he had always walked beside his horses. Now that he had grown old and gray, he was very often glad to perch on the seat and doze there. But just when a short dream had helped him to forget the bitter change in his life, another of those monsters would roar behind him its spiteful, deep "too-oot, too-oot." Then it behooved him to jump down in a hurry, pull the nags to one side, and speak to the excited creatures words of calm, of love and kindness, while his old heart rose into his throat with fright and hate. But the unknown, insolent machine was already far ahead, and away off on that terrible hill where the carter's horses quivered and stamped, where he had to breathe them nine times and smoked a whole pipe of tobacco before he reached the top, he would see the monster whizzing upward. As with a shout of joy it stormed the ascent, so that it seemed to fly out into the air at the top, before it was engulfed by the next hollow. And mockingly, already at an incredible distance, the "too-oot, too-oot" would come back to him, its bawling tones seeming to ooze away.
The low curs! Their love for this road was like that of the sportsman for the shy pigeons: love to shoot them. They joyously sought out this hundred-hilled stretch, and they exulted when they rolled over these great humps on the second or even the third speed. It was a delight to make a mock of the old road. Landscape? Beauty? It was ahead, never anywhere but ahead, ahead.
Florian Hausbaum had thought he must die of wrath and woe when these road-gobblers appeared, and yet the opposite happened: he had a new lease of life. At last he had something that once more linked him to this earth; and if it was a hatred, it led him back to men! Now they all understood him, now he could once more get first hearing in all the taverns; he could tell of dangers he had escaped, so that half a village would hastily collect to hear him repeat the tale; he might curse and threat without being ridiculed, think up tricks to play, and wage malicious battles, and once again the bar-rooms resounded with the old cry, long silenced, "Hooray, Florie, good for you! A reg'lar devil, that Hausbaum. Eyah, that's the old Styrian wine-carter for you!"
He found assent, approval, confirmation, wherever he went, and his superb white hair silenced all contradiction. Venerable and mighty was the hatred of Florian Hausbaum in all the land, and the eyes of the old carter again began to sparkle, his cheeks to look red, and his heart swelled, making the old man look magnificent. He had something to live for!