Van Valkenberg's Christmas Gift

Van Valkenberg's Christmas Gift

Dr. Henry Van Valkenberg, a stout sixty-year-old physician of scientific eminence, barely catches the departing "Chicago Limited" at Grand Central Station on Christmas eve, hauling himself aboard with a brakeman's help and the amused stares of fellow passengers. Settling into his sleeping-car section, he is addressed by a self-possessed four-year-old girl in a white dress with black shoulder-knots and a black bow in her yellow curls, who anxiously asks whether he was hurt. Watching her rejoin the plain, kindly nurse across the aisle, he deduces from her mourning trimmings that she is an orphan being sent to a new home, and he is unexpectedly moved, reflecting on his own childless, lonely state. He invites the child to visit him, and after she formally asks her "Nana's" permission, she settles beside him, declaring she can take care of him as she once took care of her mamma and gave her her medicine. Asked her name, she says it is Hope, and worries whether he likes it. He tells her Hope is the nicest name except one—Katharine—and recounts, half to himself, the story of a little girl named Katharine he once loved as a child in a white house with an old garden, whom he taught to ride and watched grow up, only to lose her to another man when she became a young lady. Hope's innocent, indignant questions about why Katharine didn't stay reopen old feelings in him, and his rueful account ends in a burst of laughter at her scornful sympathy. Turning the mood cheerful again, he asks where she will hang her stockings; she says Nana has told her Santa Claus does not travel on trains, but perhaps he will leave something at Cousin Gertie's. Van Valkenberg tells her he has heard Santa Claus will board the train at Buffalo and will fill a pair of small black stockings hung from her section—even one with a hole in the toe. He secures the nurse's consent, presenting his card; she recognizes his name and reveals that Dr. Abbey had sought him for a consultation the previous week on her last case—Hope's mother—but he had been out of town, and the patient died. He invites both nurse and child to dinner in the dining-car, where Hope eats her bread and milk with dignified restraint. That night, after Hope hangs her stockings and falls asleep, word spreads through the train's other passengers that a little girl in section nine, car Floradora, has hung up stockings for Santa Claus, and fathers, mothers, and uncles quietly contribute gifts from their own luggage. Christmas morning, Hope wakes the car with delighted exclamations, dancing in the aisle with her new toys, to the smiling indulgence of the other passengers. During the day, as the train presses on through falling snow, Van Valkenberg feels drawn ever more deeply to the child, sensing in her a likeness to his lost Katharine. He asks the nurse to tell him what she knows of the girl. She reveals the child is Hope Armitage, daughter of the late Mrs. Katharine Armitage, a widow who had supported herself and her child by sewing after her husband's death three years earlier, and who had died at the hospital, worn out, leaving Hope alone; the nurses, all fond of her, had raised money to clothe Hope and send her to a cousin in Chicago, since the Chicago relatives had little money and had even considered placing her in an institution before relenting to take her in. Realizing that Hope is Katharine's own child, Van Valkenberg is filled with quiet resolve and asks the nurse whether the Chicago relatives would give Hope to him, since her parents were old friends and the situation feels like fate; the nurse assures him they would gladly agree, given their earlier reluctance. He returns to Hope and asks her, as he once asked her mother, to come and stay with him always as his own little girl. She agrees, embracing him and promising to take care of him too. He tells the nurse he will accompany them to the cousin's home from the train to settle the guardianship at once. As the train arrives in Chicago, Van Valkenberg gathers Hope into his arms, instructs a porter to manage the luggage, and carries her through the crowded, brightly lit station amid cries of "Merry Christmas," she laughing triumphantly and he watching her with open tenderness as they make their way through the throng.

By Maud Van Buren · First published 1927 · Genre: Sentimental Fiction, Christmas Fiction, Romance · 5,678 words

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_Elizabeth G. Jordan_

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Van Valkenberg's Christmas Gift is listed on Textopian as a short story by Maud Van Buren, dated 1927 CE.

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adoption · Chicago · Christmas · Christmas Eve · Christmas gifts · domestic fiction · early twentieth century · father-daughter relationship · fate · found family · generosity · lost love

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