An incredible amount of ingenuity is expended in China on deceptions practised to mislead the gwei or demon, whose influence you have cause to fear. Being a malignant spirit, his object is to hurt that which you specially value, therefore it is well to deceive him into thinking that your precious son is only a useless girl, or even a little animal. This is not difficult to manage, for the gwei, though powerful to work evil, is a simple creature, and it is sufficient for him to see earrings dangling from your boy's ears to make him think he sees a girl, or if you call the child by some such name as "puppy," "little pig," "kitten," or "goat," he will quite fail to perceive that the object of your affection is two legs short of what one might be led to expect.
When a gwei has really determined to injure your child, it is sometimes necessary to kill a dog and wrap your boy in its skin, that it may be perfectly evident to the whole spirit world that if you are bestowing any affection, it is only on a valueless beast. In the case of Mrs. Fan's little girl, no gwei could reasonably be supposed to attach much value to her, and it was therefore sufficient for this neighbour to pronounce herself willing to stand in the place of a mother. She was allowed to live, and with painful frankness given the name of "One too many."
After the month spent in the Opium Refuge, Mrs. Fan often saw the lady missionaries either at Hwochow or in her own house, and when they were joined by a lady who had no previous knowledge of the Chinese language, Mrs. Fan was asked if little "One too many" might come and live with the missionary so that her childish prattle should help the newcomer in recognising the difficult sounds and tones. She was now eight years old and permission was readily granted, so to Hwochow she went and became an inmate of the Christian household there, her name being altered to the now appropriate one of "greatly loved"—in Chinese, Ai Do.
The years passed by, and little Ai Do won the love and approval of all. She received her education in the girls' school, and there grew up in her the ambition to be a teacher, as her elder sister was. At fourteen years of age she sat one Sunday evening reading her Bible, and came to the words: "The Lord seeth not as man seeth; man looketh on the outward appearance, the Lord looketh on the heart." She stopped and pondered, realising with the force that can only come with conviction of the Spirit of God, that while in "the outward" no one had fault to find with her, yet the Lord looking on the heart saw her full of sin and unreconciled to Him. In that hour her peace was made, and henceforth she served and trusted God through all the vicissitudes of her short life. She remained a pupil in the school until the year 1900, when Miss Stevens and Miss Clarke went to Taiyüanfu, never to return. It was a reign of terror during which rapine and murder stalked unhindered through the land, and young women fled to the remotest districts where they might claim a shelter.
The matter of Ai Do's marriage had been under consideration for some time, she having now reached the age when custom exacts that this important matter should be settled. Various suitors presented themselves, but in most cases there was some hitch which prevented the engagement from being finally settled. In one case the man lived on the other side of the river, and this would cause difficulty in the girl's frequent journeys from one home to the other; in another, the matter of the sum required as dowry could not be finally fixed; in a third, she would have been required to worship idols.
Amongst the number was a young man, favoured by Mrs. Fan but known as a wild and dissolute youth, and the missionaries who had cared for Ai Do so many years refused their consent to the engagement. Now they were dead, and Mrs. Fan had scope for the exercise of the domineering will which made her ruler of the home, for while she was an enthusiastic follower of the Church she had never given evidence of personal conversion.
It was certainly advisable that a young woman of Ai Do's age should not be unmarried at that difficult time. Christians went in daily peril of their lives, and the soldier was scarcely less to be dreaded than the Boxer.
"No one uses good iron to make nails, and no one will use a good man to make a soldier," says a Chinese proverb, which has been proved to be only too true in many cases.
Hastily, and almost secretly, the formalities of the engagement were performed, cards were exchanged which fixed the contract, and the earrings, rings, and silk and satin garments were brought from the bridegroom's home. Ai Do had heard much of this man, and his reputation was such as to cause her the gravest misgivings. The household which she was to enter as a bride would not require her to join in the offering of nuptial sacrifices to idols because her future mother-in-law had come under the sound of the Gospel, but more than this can scarcely be said. The son to whom she was engaged had been brought up on a régime of such extreme indulgence as can only be met with amongst an Oriental people. His mother had never once restrained him in a childish selfishness nor a manly vice. From a spoilt, inconsiderate, wilful childhood he passed to a cruel, passionate, licentious manhood; finally, he took to opium smoking and ruin threatened the home. His mother reaped a bitter harvest of sorrow from the planting of those wasted years, and now her urgent plea was: "My son is good at heart, and a virtuous bride will soon work a reform in him."
Every relation and friend and neighbour had a say in the transaction, only Ai Do must not be consulted, and though she weep and plead to be left unmarried for a time yet, her tears and supplications can cause no effect. In vain were the silver ornaments and fine clothes displayed before her; she refused to take food and wept bitterly, not with the conventional tears of the Chinese girl bewailing her virginity and begging that she may not be torn from the shelter of her maiden home, but with a real horror of the fate which awaited her.