"'I'm säafe, I'll never go in fear of hell no more.... When I think wot I wur—a very worm and no man, as the Scriptures say—and then I think how He has accepted me.... I reckon I'll give all my life to Him, to serve Him and love Him, and reckon as I'll never drink nor smoke nor grumble at Mabel as long as I live.'"
But Clem and Polly are not satisfied about him.
"'I can't help wishing,'" said Polly to her husband, "'as he hadn't got hold of such a Salvation sort of religion—I can't help thinking as he'll find as much trouble on his way to God as ever he found on his way to the devil.'"
People certainly liked him better as an "honest sinner."
"'Wotsumdever ull Bob do next? That's wot I'd lik' to hear,'" said Mary; "'fust it's a woman, and then it's drink, and then it's the devil, and then it's God: reckon he's tried every way to disgrace us as he knows.'"
"'I thought I'd married a man,'" is Mabel's thought, "'and now it seems I've married a Young Man—a Young Man's Christian Association.'"
Robert's love for her became more diffident and beseeching, for its glamours and ardours she had no response, for its doubts and hesitations she had nothing but contempt. "'I believe you'd make me as big a fool as yourself, if you could,'" she said. The people in the district get to the point where they "'wöan't täake any more preaching from a chap wot's bin a byword in the Parish fur loosness this five years.'" So Clem tries to make him "höald his tongue," but he has come to look upon himself as an apostle sent to the Gentiles, so he becomes a tramping Methodist, like the hero of Sheila Kaye-Smith's first book.
"On a warm March Sunday, when the hedges were brushed with green bloom, and the willow catkin made creamy splashes in the brown of the woods, Robert went off to Goudhurst."
Getting tired with his long walk, "he suddenly felt that it would be good to turn out of the lane, and lie down on the earth-smelling grass of one of those big, quiet fields, just where the shadow of the hedge was lacy on the edge of the sunshine ... to smell the earth, and feel its sweet, living strength as he lay on it ... while round him the primrose leaves uncurled, and the spotted leaves of the field orchid broke the green film of their bract, and the warm daisies breathed out a scent that was the caught essence of spring heat and honey ..." but he pulled himself up short ... this was the devil tempting him. "He distrusted a yearning for the beauty of the fields ... of old times he used never to think twice about the country—but since his conversion he had had ... temptations to turn to mere beauty." The conflict in his mind affected his preaching powers adversely. In the evening he meets a tramp whom he turns from the drink and is seduced by him into sleeping out of doors. "A strange, sweet peace had dropped upon him at last—he had forgotten the rubs and humiliations of his Sabbath ... but he did not sleep till nearly dawn. The night seemed awake ... it was full of a living scent of earth and grass, which mixed strangely with the musty dry scent of the hay. There was a continual flutter and whisper in the hedge, queer muffled sounds came from the next field ... he slept just when the rich blue of the darkness was turning grey."
Mabel was furious with him, but he continued his irregular ministry. "It belonged to the casual nights he spent under the stars—soft purple nights of June, when the horns of the yellow moon burned above the woods, and the air was warm, and thick with the smell of hay. He associated it with the sweet, straggling sunlight of late afternoon or early morning, with village wells, and cool deserted lanes ... he made no wonderful stir among the people, either for good or evil." He was not stoned at the cross-roads, any more than he was thronged by repentant sinners.