Free Barbara by Jorgen-Frantz Jacobsen

rose as grey clouds in the bitterly cold air.
    Pastor Poul sat thinking of all the times he had attended service in the cathedral in Copenhagen, all the courteous commotion outside the west door of carriages, hansoms and servants banging carriage doors. He thought of the well-dressed throng of distinguished and ordinary citizens who with pleasure and dignity strode down three equally lofty aisles between the columns as the organ played a solemn voluntary and growled beneath the vaulted roof. Alas, here in Tórshavn there was only a poor, bent parish clerk hoarsely stammering his way through the introit . And meanwhile there was a deathly silence beneath the roof beams and not the usual coughing and spluttering.
    Immediately after this, Barbara hurried quietly in and sat down beside her mother in the judge’s pew – as a final living glimpse of the world before the start of the sombre hymn.
    Judge Johan Hendrik Heyde had on this day come to church together with the bailiff and his daughter. He had greeted them, exchanged a few words and smiled, but when they had entered the porch he had not accompanied them up the floor of the church to his pew. Instead, he had made his bulky way up into the gallery.
    Why did he do this? He had nothing against them, but there was nevertheless something keeping them apart at that moment. They were speaking Danish. Well, of course, that was their language. And Johan Hendrik had nothing against things Danish – he had himself spent much time in Denmark, and his own family was Danish. Indeed, he would have thought it unreasonable if people such as the bailiff or the storekeeper had spoken Faroese. And yet, here on home ground among ordinary Faroese people, this easily flowing language was in conflict with the right tone. It irritated him a little, as when he heard someone nearby playing a badly tuned instrument. He was himself attuned to the people. So it was against his nature to go forward into the front row. He preferred to remain in the background in the gallery. Here, he could sit quietly and think about agricultural improvements, new fishing experiments and other useful subjects serving the interests of the country.
    Some time after the judge had taken his place, there was a heavy creaking on the stairs, and up came his cousin Samuel Mikkelsen, the islands’ law speaker. He was big and ungainly, but he, too, preferred the gallery. Not on account of any subtle ill will towards other good people, but purely out of discretion. He proceeded so carefully; if he made a joke it was an elegant one, and when he took a drink during the service he did so with great delicacy – not secretly like some scoundrel or schoolboy, but with imperturbable dignity. Johan Hendrik felt refreshed by his presence, but, perhaps not without reason, Bailiff Harme thought that His Majesty’s Faroese-born officials misunderstood their position by hiding themselves from view among the riffraff in the six free benches in the gallery.
    Things were completely different with the commandant, Lieutenant Otto Hjørring. He did not hide his light under a bushel, but strode into the church in his red dress uniform, with rapier, moustache, pigtail and everything that could be required of a military personage. But admittedly, he made a mistake and blundered into one of the common pews. Beach Flea was both honoured and concerned and directed a great number of anxious glances at the overwhelming proximity of such splendour and delectable perfume.
    This was how they came, all the people of the parish, high and low. Gabriel in his Sunday best, pious and unrecognisable. The staff of the Store and the gunners from the Redoubt, the owner of the home farm with his workers and the village farmer who had come on foot from afar. The congregation worked their way through the first long-winded hymn. There was no organ. The cold, shivering voices hardly kept time with each other. Some sang splendidly and with a sense of artistry; for instance