A poor black paint lay very unhappy in its tube one day alone,
having tumbled out of an artist's color box and lying quite
unnoticed for a year. "I am only Lampblack," he said to himself.
"The master never looks at me: he says I am heavy, dull,
lustreless, useless. I wish I could cake and dry up and die, as
poor Flake-white did when he thought she turned yellow and
deserted her."
But Lampblack could not die; he could only lie in his tin tube and
pine, like a silly, sorrowful thing as he was, in company with
some broken bits of charcoal and a rusty palette knife. The master
never touched him; month after month passed by, and he was never
thought of; the other paints had all their turn of fair fortune,
and went out into the world to great academies and mighty palaces,
transfigured and rejoicing in a thousand beautiful shapes and
services. But Lampblack was always passed over as dull and coarse,
which indeed he was, and knew himself to be so, poor fellow, which
made it all the worse. "You are only a deposit!" said the other
colors to him; and he felt that it was disgraceful to be a
deposit, though he was not quite sure what it meant.
"If only I were happy like the others!" thought poor, sooty
Lampblack, sorrowful in his corner. "There is Bistre, now, he is
not so very much better-looking than I am, and yet they can do
nothing without him, whether it is a girl's face or a wimple in a
river!"
The others were all so happy in this beautiful bright studio,
whose open casements were hung with myrtle and passion-flower, and
whose silence was filled with the singing of nightingales. Cobalt,
with a touch or two, became the loveliness of summer skies at
morning; the Lakes and Carmines bloomed in a thousand exquisite
flowers and fancies; the Chromes and Ochres (mere dull earths)
were allowed to spread themselves in sheets of gold that took the
shine of the sun into the darkest places; Umber, a sombre and
gloomy thing, could lurk yet in a child's curls and laugh in a
child's smiles; whilst all the families of the Vermilions, the
Blues, the Greens, lived in a perpetual glory of sunset or
sunrise, of ocean waves or autumn woods, of kingly pageant or of
martial pomp.
It was very hard. Poor Lampblack felt as if his very heart would
break, above all when he thought of pretty little Rose Madder,
whom he loved dearly, and who never would even look at him,
because she was so very proud, being herself always placed in
nothing less than rosy clouds, or the hearts of roses, or
something as fair and spiritual.
"I am only a wretched deposit!" sighed Lampblack, and the rusty
palette knife grumbled back, "My own life has been ruined in
cleaning dirty brushes, and see what the gratitude of men and
brushes is!"
"But at least you have been of use once; but I never am--never!"
said Lampblack, wearily; and indeed he had been there so long that
the spiders had spun their silver fleeces all about him, and he
was growing as gray as an old bottle does in a dark cellar.
At that moment the door of the studio opened, and there came a
flood of light, and the step of a man was heard: the hearts of all
the colors jumped for joy, because the step was that of their
magician, who out of mere common clays and ground ores could raise
them at a touch into splendors of the gods and divinities
immortal.
Only the heart of poor dusty Lampblack could not beat a throb the
more, because he was always left alone and never was thought
worthy even of a glance. He could not believe his senses when this
afternoon--oh, miracle and ecstasy!--the step of the master
crossed the floor to the obscured corner where he lay under his
spiders' webs, and the hand of the master touched him. Lampblack
felt sick and faint with rapture. Had recognition come at last?
The master took him up, "You will do for this work," he said; and
Lampblack was borne trembling to an easel. The colors, for once in
their turn neglected, crowded together to watch, looking in their
bright tin tubes like rows of little soldiers in armor.
"It is the old dull Deposit," they murmured to one another, and
felt contemptuous, yet were curious, as scornful people often will
be.
"But I am going to be glorious and great," thought Lampblack, and
his heart swelled high; for never more would they be able to hurl
the name of Deposit at him, a name which hurt him none the less,
but all the more indeed, because it was unintelligible.
"You will do for this work," said the master, and let Lampblack
out of his metal prison house into the light and touched him with
the brush that was the wand of magic.
"What am I going to be?" wondered Lampblack, as he felt himself
taken on to a large piece of deal board, so large that he felt he
must be going to make the outline of an athlete or the shadows of
a tempest at the least.
Himself he could not tell what he was becoming: he was happy
enough and grand enough only to be employed, and, as he was being
used, began to dream a thousand things of all the scenes he would
be in, and all the hues that he would wear, and all the praise
that he would hear when he went out into that wonderful great
world of which his master was an idol. From his secret dreams he
was harshly roused; all the colors were laughing and tittering
round him till the little tin helmets they wore shook with their
merriment.
"Old Deposit is going to be a signpost," they cried to one another
so merrily that the spiders, who are not companionable creatures,
felt themselves compelled to come to the doors of their dens and
chuckle too. A signpost! Lampblack, stretched out in an ecstasy
upon the board, roused himself shivering from his dreams, and
gazed at his own metamorphosis. He had been made into seven
letters, thus:--