To know any more, we must infer his reactions from what is in the text.

Starting with Randolph's reaction to Sam, he rode past Sam and "looked black as a cloud at the shop keeper standing there." This suggests that Randolph really felt justified in his refusal to accept or permit his mother's love for or marriage to Sam. It seems that even after Sophy's death, the village simplicity that Randolph repressed and loathed in his own mother and in Sam governs him so completely that he must express that loathing to innocent, downcast mourning Sam as he drives by. Randolph seems to be escorting Sophy as though she were a prisoner on her way to the guillotine even while she is in the freedom afforded by death. Randolph seems to want to dominate even that freedom so as to keep her separate from Sam.

As to Randolph's reaction to Sophy's death, we can only infer from the few brief words of text that we have what that reaction might have been. We know that (1) he is "smooth-shaven" in an era when it was not unusual for men to go days without shaving; (2) he is dressed stiffly and rigidly in a "high waistcoat"; (3) he is not so moved by grief and sorrow that he either keeps to himself or grants a generous look of pity upon another mourner; (4) he looks "black as a cloud" at Sam standing at the side of the road, hat in hand.

From this we might infer that his reaction to Sophy's death is a cold-hearted one. His reaction does not soften his cold heart, nor does it make him repent or think differently of his restrictive behavior toward Sophy. His reaction seems to be focused more upon the appearance he gives as a unbending young priest than upon grief for his loss: "a young smooth-shaven priest in a high waistcoat looked black as a cloud ...." One might even wonder if he might think of Sophy's death as her just deserts and a vindication of his own demands.

Randolf is a young man who has been given every advantage and who associates with the best of his own generation because of his enrollment in a prestigious English public school (which are ironically tantamount to American private schools). He has a sense of superiority and does not hesitate to feel a sense of dominant authority over his mother, who is a modest woman from humble circumstances. His arrogance turns his superiority into harshness toward his mother as is illustrated by an early exchange between them when he is but "twelve or thirteen" and publicly reprimands and corrects her for her poor grammar:

[The] boy who walked at her elbow said that he hoped his father had not missed them.

'He have been so comfortable these last few hours that I am sure he cannot have missed us,' she replied.

'__Has__, dear mother--not __have__!' exclaimed the public-school boy, with an impatient fastidiousness that was almost harsh. 'Surely you know that by this time!'

As he aged, this harshness grew to such proportions that he acted as her complete authority, as was in ways typical of sons in Hardy's era, and set the rules for her behavior and privileges. This grew to such an extent that she was year after year denied the right to remarry, after being widowed, and to be wed to the sweetheart of her youth. This relationship of his dominance over her subservience thus described is epitomized by the final scene, her funeral march, when Randolf presides in an unloving, hypocritical, and domineering manner, even going so far as to scorn his dead mother's brokenhearted love of old:

From the railway-station a funeral procession ... passed his door ... a man whose eyes were wet, ... while from the mourning coach a young smooth-shaven priest in a high waistcoat looked black as a cloud ....